


Out On A Limb

by flawedamythyst



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Ceiling Vent Clint Barton, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, De-Aged Clint Barton, Deaf Clint Barton, Everyone hates magic, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Protective Bucky Barnes, de-aged Sam Wilson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-02 21:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18819268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flawedamythyst/pseuds/flawedamythyst
Summary: Sam pulled himself free of Clint, rubbing at his head, then he looked up at Steve and Bucky, around at the trashed street and super-powered battle in the sky, and burst into tears.“They’re kids,” said Steve, helplessly.Sam and Clint get turned into kids, just when Bucky was about to finally go on a date with Clint. It figured that their timing would be that crappy.Huge thanks to 1electricpirate for betaing, and Kangofucb for kid picking for me.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All 4 chapters of this should be posted this week.

“Where the fuck is Thor?” shouted Clint, ducking under a burst of magic that exploded a car behind him and then somersaulting behind cover. 

Bucky tore his eyes away from him and reminded himself for what had to be the tenth time this fight alone that he needed to keep his mind, and his eyes, on the enemy and not on checking Hawkeye was okay while enjoying the sight of him in his combat suit.

Tony skimmed in low to send another repulsor blast at the woman who had appeared out of nowhere on Fifth Avenue, floating in mid-air and calling out for Thor while shooting off balls of green fire, but it just skidded off the forcefield surrounding her like everything else they’d tried. “Even gods can’t get from New Mexico to New York in less than ten minutes, Hawkeye.”

“Bring me my prince!” shouted the woman, raising her arms and sending out more blasts of magic. She was hovering about ten feet off the ground, wearing a skin tight green number that seemed really impractical for combat, but as she was managing to kick all their asses without working up a sweat, what the hell did Bucky know?

He sent a rattle of bullets up at her, even though he knew they were just going to bounce off her forcefield, then sprinted across the road to where Steve was.

“Got a plan?”

Steve grimaced. “Keep her busy until Thor gets here and hope he knows how to deal with her.”

Great. Nothing they’d hit her with so far had made a speck of difference, and with her hovering up in the air, most of them couldn’t even reach her.

Steve noticed his look. “Got a better idea?”

Bucky shook his head, glancing around at the team. “Guess not.”

The woman sent a billowing wave of magic out and flicked back her long hair. “I tire of you underlings! Where is Thor?”

“Hey, who are you calling underling?” asked Clint, dashing out from cover to send an arrow at her and draw her attention. Sam took the opening and dived down at her, flicking his wings closed at the last moment and spinning to land a devastating kick to her head.

Or that was the plan, anyway. Instead, she flicked him away with a sweep of her hand like a gnat, sending him flying through the air and crashing into Clint. “You are but children when compared to an Asgardian!” she announced, then raised her hand and sent a bolt of sparkling magic at the collapsed heap of Sam and Clint.

“No!” Bucky shouted, sprinting across the street, but he was too late. The magic engulfed them both as the woman laughed in a mocking way that made Bucky want to rip her face off.

Not yet, though, not until he knew Clint was okay. He started to reach into the swirling mass of magic to pull Clint clear, but he was stopped by a hand grabbing his wrist.

“Don’t touch it!” said Steve.

“Fuck off!” snarled Bucky, shaking himself free.

A blinding bolt of lightning announced Thor’s arrival — finally — and he glanced over to see the woman fending off a hammer attack.

“Midgard is under my protection, Amora!” Thor bellowed.

Bucky figured that meant they could leave him to it and deal with what the hell she’d done to Clint and Sam.

The magic was starting to shrink down, fading away to reveal two limp bodies.

“Holy shit,” said Steve, which was what Bucky would have said if he weren’t too shocked to speak.

“Did you seriously just swear?” asked Tony over the comms. “What the hell can be that bad?”

Sam pulled himself free of Clint, rubbing at his head, then he looked up at Steve and Bucky, around at the trashed street and super-powered battle in the sky, and burst into tears.

“They’re kids,” said Steve, helplessly.

Both Sam and Clint were now tiny, probably some age between 5 and 10, although Bucky wasn’t good enough at judging children’s ages to narrow it down more than that. Their combat gear had shrunk with them, which was seriously going to piss Clint off once he saw what had happened to his favourite quiver.

Clint pulled away from Sam and shuffled backwards, glaring at both Steve and Bucky as he set his back to the wall. Bucky crouched down, belatedly remembering to put his gun in its holster before holding a hand out to him. 

“Hey, Clint,” he said, trying out a kid-friendly tone of voice but not really hitting it. “You okay? Do you know us?”

Clint pulled his arms and legs into a tight ball. “No,” he said, and if seeing him as a tiny, mop-headed kid hadn’t freaked Bucky out, hearing him talk in a high-pitched kid’s voice definitely did.

“I want my mommy!” wailed Sam, just as Tony landed and flipped open his face plate to stare. Clint’s eyes fixed on his suit and he wrapped his arms even tighter around himself.

“Hey, kid, it’s okay,” said Tony, dropping to one knee. “Look, this is Captain America. You know Captain America, right? Everyone does, he’s the best. You can totally trust him. He’s going to take you somewhere safe, okay?”

Sam stopped crying long enough to pull in a loud sniff and stare at Steve. “Captain America?” he repeated, with awe.

Bucky could tell that Steve was hiding a grimace, but Tony probably had the right idea. They needed to get the two of them off the street and safe at the Tower, and that would be easier with their cooperation. Playing the Captain America card was probably the best way to do that.

He glanced at Clint again to see him gently touching his hearing aids with his fingertips. He pulled his hand away and curled his arm back around himself when he saw Bucky looking.

“That’s me,” said Steve, with the cheerful tone he used for kids. “Here, do you want to see my shield?” He pulled it off his back and offered it to Sam, who stared at it with wide eyes.

“Oh, _wow_.” He reached out a tentative hand and touched it.

Clint snorted. “You’re dumb,” he said. “And a crybaby.”

Sam whirled around. “I’m not!”

“Sure you are,” said Clint. “No way that’s Captain America. He died, remember? He’s just some guy in a suit. I bet you still believe in Santa, don’t you, baby?”

Sam drew himself up to his full height and stamped a tiny foot. “I do not!”

“Baby,” sneered Clint.

“I’m not a baby!” shouted Sam, and threw himself at Clint. Bucky grabbed the back of his shrunk-down flight pack and pulled him away before things could get out-of-hand.

Well, more out-of-hand than having two of the team reduced to kids and, Christ, he hadn’t even started to get his head around that yet. Clint was _so small_ , and despite his glares and bitching, he was so vulnerable that Bucky wanted to do nothing more than to wrap him up in a blanket and keep him safe until this spell wore off.

Fuck, this spell better wear off.

“Enough,” he growled. “We need to get you out of here, it’s not safe. Just go with Captain America.”

“No,” said Clint, stubbornly. He glanced at Sam. “And if you’ve got any sense, baby, you won’t either. They’re lying to us, and nothing good comes when adults lie to you.”

“We’re not lying,” said Bucky. He glanced at Steve. “Any ideas, Cap?”

Steve shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t die,” he said. “I know everyone thought I did, but I was just asleep in the Arctic. They found me a few years ago and woke me up.”

Clint clearly didn’t believe a word of it. Sam glanced at Steve, then back at Clint’s scowling face, and looked torn.

“Okay, new plan,” said Tony. “How about this? Come with us and you’ll both get ice cream. And pizza.”

Sam’s eyes lit up, but Clint just rolled his eyes. “That’s what bad guys always say to lure kids away.”

“Christ, Barton, I didn’t realise your paranoia was so ingrained,” said Tony. He glanced over his shoulder at where Thor and Amora’s battle had moved far enough away that all they could see was lightning bolts and flashes of magic. 

“How do you know my name?” asked Clint, suspiciously enough to prove Tony’s point about paranoia right.

“We know you both,” said Bucky. “We’re your friends, Clint, although I know you don’t remember that right now.” He took a deep breath and tried to work out what would get a kid to trust a bunch of strange guys wearing combat suits. He glanced at Tony. “How about we call Sam’s mom? You have her number, right?”

“My mom?” asked Sam, perking up and stepping forward. “You know my mom?”

“Sure we do,” said Steve. “She makes the best cookies, right?”

Sam’s face broke out in a grin and he nodded enthusiastically. “Can you get her to come?”

There was an awkward pause as they all considered the psychological effect of having Sam’s mom turn up thirty years older than he remembered her.

“Probably not,” said Tony, standing up. “She lives a long way away, but we can totally get her on the phone.” He held a gauntlet out to Steve. “JARVIS has the number, but I need your cell.”

Steve frowned at him and Tony gestured at his suit. “I don’t exactly carry one with me in this.”

Steve sighed and dug out a phone for Tony, who took it and then dropped his faceplate and took a few steps backwards, presumably so that he could call Mrs Wilson and give her a heads up on the really strange phone call she was about to get. 

Bucky glanced over at the battle again and spotted Natasha watching them from across the street. He raised an eyebrow at her and she shook her head, then melted away into the alley behind her. 

“I’ll keep an eye on the fight, and let you know if it looks like Thor needs any back-up,” she said over the comms.

“Acknowledged,” said Steve.

Bucky watched Clint’s eyes dart over to him, and then to the comms unit in his ear. He glanced around at the street, drawing back into himself, and Bucky wondered what the hell was going through his head.

The kicker was that he was definitely right not to trust a bunch of strange men trying to get him back to their home, especially ones carrying as much weaponry as Bucky had on him right now.

Not that Sam and Clint were unarmed, of course. Clint’s bow must have gone flying when Sam crashed into him, before Amora’s spell took effect, but he still had a couple of knives and his back-up gun strapped to him. They were all shrunk down to child-sized, but Bucky was willing to bet the gun still worked. Sam’s guns were holstered on his back, where Bucky was really hoping he wouldn’t find them.

“How do you know us when we don’t know you?” asked Clint, and Steve winced.

“That’s pretty complicated,” he said.

Clint’s frown deepened and Bucky could see their chances of ever getting him to trust them slipping away.

“Look, we’re your friends,” he said. “I know that seems nuts, but it’s true. You see the flashing lights over there? Do you remember seeing the lady who was sending coloured blasts around, and the big guy in the cloak?”

Sam hesitated. “He was flying,” he said slowly, as if expecting to be ridiculed.

“That’s right,” said Steve. “They’re both, uh—”

“They’re magic,” said Bucky, because this wasn’t the time to get into aliens and gods. “The woman is evil, and she worked some kinda spell on you two. It’s made you forget about us.”

“Magic isn’t real,” said Clint, but he didn’t sound too sure about it.

“Kid, I wish that was true,” said Tony, flipping his faceplate up again and stepping forward. Clint immediately flinched backwards, but Tony wasn’t looking at him. “Here, Mini-Wilson, your mom’s on the phone.”

He held out the cell and Sam grabbed for it with eager hands. “Mom?” he asked down the phone, and then immediately burst into tears at whatever she said to him. “Mom, I don’t like it, it’s scary here.”

Bucky had expected Clint to give him another scathing look for that, but instead he just looked worried. “Are you going to call my parents?”

There was an awkward pause.

“Nope,” said Tony. “Don’t have their number.”

“Oh, okay,” said Clint, but he didn’t look upset. If anything, he relaxed.

Clint never talked about his family, other than that they died when he was a kid, before he ended up at the circus. He talked about the circus often enough, but whatever his life had been like before that never came up.

Bucky didn’t have time just yet to think about that, and what it might mean for the kid in front of him, because there was a particularly big explosion of lightning that brought the sounds of battle to an end.

“Thor’s driven her away,” reported Natasha over the comms.

“Okay, Nat,” said Steve, turning away from where Sam was still talking to his mom in between sniffling sobs. “You and Thor should both go straight back to the Tower, I don't think introducing more strangers is going to help at this stage.”

“Make sure there’s ice cream and pizza,” Tony added. “I don’t want to be the asshole that lied to a couple of kids about junk food.”

Sam let out one last hiccuping sob. “Okay, Mom,” he said. “I love you too.” He held the phone out to Steve. “She wants to talk to you.”

Steve took the phone and went a few steps away to talk to her.

“Are you okay with coming with us now?” Tony asked Sam.

He nodded, and glanced at Clint. “Mom says he’s really Captain America and that he’s a good guy and that they’ll look after us.”

Clint’s scowl didn’t lighten. “And you believe her?”

Sam blinked at him. “She’s my _mom_ ,” he said. “Moms don’t lie.”

A hurt look flashed across Clint’s face but he nodded. “Okay,” he said. “But if they do bad things to us, it’s your fault.”

Tony snorted. “Kid, all we’re going to do is load you up with fat and sugar while we try to work out how to fix this.”

“Are we walking?” asked Bucky, standing up from his crouch. Steve was grimacing at whatever Mrs Wilson was saying to him, which meant he was getting a mom lecture. Bucky definitely didn’t envy him that.

“I’m pretty sure the last thing we need is the media getting photos of Iron Man flying around with a couple of kids tucked under his arms,” said Tony as Steve finally managed to hang up on Sam’s mom and came back over.

“SHIELD have the area locked down,” he said. “If we go now we’ll avoid any media.” He tried out a careful smile at Sam and held out a hand. “Do you want to hold my hand on the way to the Tower?”

Sam’s eyes lit up. “Yes!” he said, apparently completely over the tears and distrust now that he was faced with getting to hold Captain America’s hand.

Once he was back to his adult self, Bucky was going to give him so much shit about this.

Bucky looked at Clint, who had stood up but still had his arms wrapped around his chest. “I’m not holding anyone’s hand,” he snapped. “I’m not a baby.”

“That’s cool,” said Bucky, tucking his hands into his pockets to make it clear that he wasn’t expecting anything. “I don’t like holding strangers’ hands either.”

Clint did deign to walk beside him as they followed after Steve and Sam, Tony clanking along in the armour next to them. He kept his arms wrapped tight around himself for the first block, then tried to put his hands into pockets that his combat suit didn’t have, before looking down at his outfit as if realising what he was wearing for the first time. 

“What am I wearing?”

“You can get changed at the Tower,” said Tony, which wasn’t really an answer, but Bucky didn’t think there was any answer they could give that wasn’t going to freak Clint out all over again, and they should at least wait until they were in the Tower before they did that. They couldn’t rely on the press staying away forever. “In fact, how about I go make sure we’ve got kidlet-sized clothes that aren’t body armour? You still the world’s biggest fan of purple?”

Clint’s eyes went wide and he glanced around as if expecting someone to be listening. “No!” he said, sounding panicked. “Purple’s a _girl’s_ colour!”

“Okay,” said Tony, easily. “I mean, it’s not, it’s a whoever-wants-to-wear-it colour, just like all the others, but if you want blue or something instead, that’s cool.”

He took a couple of steps back and let his faceplate fall. “See you at home,” he said, then lit up his repulsors and flew up into the sky. Bucky had a mental image of him landing at the nearest Target and buying a bunch of kids clothes still in the suit, and wondered how that was going to play in the press.

“Wow,” said Clint, staring up after him with wide eyes. For the first time, he looked like most of the other kids Bucky had seen around the Avengers. “Is he a robot?”

“Nope,” said Bucky, crushing the surge of jealousy. “Just a rich guy with a lot of tech toys.”

“Rich?” repeated Clint.

Bucky nodded. “Oh yeah,” he said. They turned a corner and the Tower came fully in view at the end of street. He nodded at it. “He owns that whole building, and we all live at the top.”

Clint was shocked into silence for a few minutes, and Bucky let him process.

“How did I get here?” he asked eventually, in a quiet voice.

Bucky took a deep breath. “That’s a really long story,” he said. “How about we just focus on getting that pizza Tony was talking about?”

Clint nodded and didn’t say anything else, not even when they got inside the Tower and into the elevator with Sam, who was talking a mile-a-minute about everything and nothing while Steve grinned at him, putting in the occasional word. Clint set his back into the corner of the elevator and gave them both a look of deep distrust.

When the doors opened to reveal the common area of the Avengers’ living quarters, which was an enormous open-plan area with views out across the city, Sam let out an audible gasp. “Is that your TV?” he asked, sprinting towards the enormous TV Tony had insisted was necessary.

“Yeah,” said Steve, following him. “You like it?”

“It’s so big!” said Sam.

Bucky glanced at Clint, who hadn’t moved. “You coming?” he asked. “You don’t want Sam to eat all the pizza, do you?”

Clint shook his head and slipped out of the elevator, staring with wide eyes at the view from the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“You like heights, right?” said Bucky.

Clint nodded. “I like climbing trees,” he said. “But this is…” He faded off with a look of awe.

Bucky snorted. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I’m a fan of being high up as well, I get it.”

Clint went right close to the window, looking out at the city for a long few minutes. Bucky glanced around to see Natasha watching him from the kitchen. She caught his eyes, then pointedly tapped one of her sheathed knives, then gestured at Clint.

Bucky waved a hand at Clint’s back to express that she was welcome to try and disarm the kid herself, but she just pressed her lips together and disappeared again. Great.

“Hey, how about we get some of those uncomfortable bits off you?” he said, and Clint turned around to frown at him. Bucky wasn’t sure he had any other facial expressions at this point.

Clint glanced down at himself, then over his shoulder at the quiver. “Are those arrows?”

“Yep,” said Bucky. “I know you love arrows, but if we’re going to be eating, you’ll probably want to take them off.”

“I don’t love arrows,” said Clint, sounding confused. “I’ve never seen one before. Only on TV and movies and things.” He reached back to pull one out of the quiver.

“Stop!” said Bucky. “Don’t touch them!” Half those arrows were explosive, and the other half did shit he didn’t even want to think about.

Clint froze still, like a frightened rabbit. “Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t— sorry.”

He sounded far more scared than he should be. Bucky gritted his teeth to stop his first reaction to that, and then tried out a gentle voice. “Sorry for snapping, just— some of those are kinda dangerous. Better to just take it off.” He stepped forward to release the catch for Clint, but Clint flinched backwards, out of his reach, until the window was pressed against his back.

Bucky stopped moving, feeling heartsick. What the hell kind of life did this kid have to be reacting like this? Why the hell hadn’t Clint ever said anything about it?

Except Bucky could guess all too well why he hadn’t said anything. Clint always held his hurts very close to his chest.

Bucky tapped at his chest. “There’s a catch there,” he said. “Like on a backpack. Just squeeze the sides and it’ll come off.”

Clint fumbled it open, letting the quiver fall to the ground, and Bucky nodded and tried out an encouraging smile. “That’s great. Now try the belt, and the straps on your legs.”

Step by step, he coaxed Clint into unclipping his weapons and pulling off his body armour, until he was just in his combat pants and undershirt. And the massive heavy boots, but Bucky figured he wouldn’t want to be barefoot if he was feeling vulnerable, which he clearly was.

Sam actually let Steve just take his combat gear off for him, which looked a lot easier, and then Steve took it all away somewhere out of the way. He took the chance to change out of his own combat suit as well, which clearly disappointed Sam.

JARVIS put on some kids movie that Sam settled in front of with a rapt look and which Clint eventually slunk away from the windows to watch.

As soon as he was sure no one was watching, Bucky let himself have the freak out that had been building since he saw Clint engulfed in a cloud of magic. He retreated to the kitchen, where he was still close enough to hear the others but they couldn’t see him slump at the table and press his hands to his forehead.

He and Clint had been dancing around each other for a while. Going out to the park or for coffee, hanging out for hours together in the range, occasionally even making out, although Bucky wasn’t sure he was ready for the next logical step beyond that.

Or he hadn't been, right up until last night, when they'd been walking back from dinner and Clint had said something and then given Bucky that irrepressible grin that Bucky loved so much, and he'd thought, fuck it. Fuck Hydra, fuck the parts of his brain that tried to convince him he couldn't have this yet. Fuck all of that. He wanted Clint, and it seemed like Clint wanted him, and there was no good reason to put it off any longer. 

He'd pressed Clint back into an alley and against a wall, and kissed him.

Clint had melted into him, kissing back and resting his hands gently on Bucky's waist.

“Next time we have dinner, we should make it a proper date,” Bucky had said. 

“Yeah?” Clint had replied, his eyes shining with pleasure. “You realise if we make this official, Tony's gonna start making bad jokes about it.”

Bucky had snorted. “That's a small price to pay for getting to have this.” He’d kissed Clint again. “And you'll be the one getting the talk about taking care with my fragile mental health from Steve, anyway.”

Clint had groaned. “I've changed my mind,” he’d said, but his arms had curved tighter around Bucky's waist and he had kissed him again, so Bucky hadn't paid any attention. 

And now Clint was a little kid who didn't even know who Bucky was, and they hadn’t even got to have that first proper date, let alone tell the others about it.

The elevator dinged, drawing Bucky from his thoughts, and he straightened up, took a deep breath to push the whole mess of emotions aside, and went out to see that Thor had arrived, carrying a stack of pizza boxes.

“I bring a feast!” he announced in a bellow.

Sam sat up, staring at him with wide eyes, while Clint flinched back at the noise into the corner of the sofa.

Bucky had abruptly had it with this whole thing. He strode over to Thor. “What the fuck did that bitch do to Clint, and how the hell are you going to fix it?”

Thor glanced over at Clint and Sam and winced. “I don't know. Magic is not my realm.”

Bucky let out a noise of frustration. “Make it your damn realm. No one in this Tower is set up for child-rearing.”

“I will do what I can,” said Thor. “But I will need to consult others.”

“So go consult!” snapped Bucky. 

Steve cleared his throat. “Okay, that's enough, Buck. Let the guy come in so we can eat and talk about this like civilised people.”

Bucky took a deep breath and turned away from Thor before he did something stupid, like pick a fight with a god.

It was only when he caught sight of Clint that he realised his mistake. Clint was curled up tightly in the corner of the sofa, arms wrapped around himself and a terrified look on his face.

Okay. Bucky really needed to remember not to raise his voice around him.

Thor came past him, setting the stack of pizzas down on the coffee table. “Greetings, little ones,” he said. “I am Thor. You will not remember me, but we are friends.”

“You were flying,” said Sam.

Thor nodded. “I was.”

“And you took out the bad woman,” added Sam.

Thor hesitated at that. “I’m afraid I only drove her away. I can’t promise that she won’t be back.”

Bucky wasn’t sure that much honesty was a good idea, because Sam looked scared and glanced at Steve for reassurance in a way that would be hilarious if Bucky wasn’t feeling so ill about this whole thing.

“You’re going to give us everything you know about her,” said Steve. He glanced at Sam, then added, “After we’ve eaten.”

Thor nodded and opened the top pizza box. “Eat, friends,” he said to Sam and Clint.

Sam immediately grabbed a slice, his face lighting up. Clint hesitated, looking at the box and then at Thor, as if weighing up a difficult decision.

Bucky made himself move, moving the top box to one side so he could go through and find the one he was looking for and then trying out a smile at Clint as he sat down on the chair next to him. “Pepperoni’s your favourite, right? Want to share with me?”

Clint looked down at the box Bucky was holding open between them, then reached out for a slice, glancing at Bucky as if expecting him to yank it away at the last minute.

“Eat as much as you want,” said Bucky. “We usually order too much and end up with leftovers anyway.”

Clint didn’t look very sure about that, but Bucky didn’t think pressing the point was going to get him any further. Better to wait and let Clint come to the conclusion that no one was going to take the food away in his own time.

Tony came back while they were eating, out of the Iron Man suit and carrying a couple of bags. “New clothes for the mini-birds,” he said, dumping them by the table. “And you’ve finished the veggie special already, I see how it is, you only do this to hurt me.”

“There’s another one at the bottom,” said Steve.

Tony grinned at him and clasped his hands over his heart. “Oh Captain, my Captain, you do care.”

“Thor ordered the pizza,” said Steve, with a roll of his eyes.

Tony’s grin flicked over to Thor and he blew him a kiss. “My favourite alien.” He pulled out the box with his pizza in, then sat down and eyed Sam and Clint with a gleam in his eye that Bucky didn’t trust.

“Okay, so, have we got anywhere with working this out? They don’t remember anything about us, right?”

“Amora’s spell will have fixed them at a previous age,” said Thor. “They will remember nothing after that. For them, it has not happened.”

“Okay,” said Tony. “Sounds just like the kind of ass—”

“Tony,” said Steve, in a warning tone.

Tony smoothly switched what he’d been saying to, “—Asgardian crap that I hate.” He looked at Sam and then at Clint, running his eyes over them. “So, how old are you guys?”

“I’m six and a half,” said Sam, chin jutting out with pride.

Clint snorted. “I’m nearly nine,” he said, with a sneer. “I’m lots older than you, I knew you were a baby.”

“I’m not!” said Sam, and for a moment it looked like there was going to be another row.

“Okay,” cut in Tony, “Great, neither of you are babies, you’re both clearly just tiny little adults.”

“Like you, you mean,” said Steve.

Tony gaped at him because even after all this time, he was still taken by surprise by Steve’s sassy comments every time they happened. Bucky snorted a laugh, then reached for the last slice of pizza.

Clint’s hand had been about to take it, but he snatched it back at Bucky’s movement. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t— I wasn’t going to take it,” he said, words tumbling over themselves.

“Don’t worry, you can have it,” said Bucky, pushing the box towards him.

Clint shook his head, staring down at the carpet.

“Okay,” said Bucky. “Well, I think I actually want some of Tony’s, so I’m just going to leave it here, okay? If you don’t want it, we’ll put it in the fridge for tomorrow.”

He left the box and went to grab a slice from Tony, ignoring his protest.

Clint didn’t move to take the last slice of pepperoni for another five minutes, and when he did he moved quickly, glancing at Bucky as if waiting to be told off. Bucky kept his eyes fixed on the movie that was still playing and pretended he hadn’t seen.

“We should talk in private,” said Steve, glancing at Sam and Clint before looking at Thor.

Thor nodded. “It would be for the best.”

There was an awkward pause when all the adults realised they couldn't just leave two kids unattended in the Tower, at least not until they'd childproofed it a bit. God only knew how many weapons were just lying about.

“I'll stay,” said Bucky, because he wasn't the tactical planning guy, or the god who actually knew anything about magic, or the tech genius who might figure something out that might fix this. Plus, he wanted to stay with Clint while he was like this. He couldn't shake the idea of just how easy it would be for someone to hurt him right now.

Steve nodded and stood up. “JARVIS, ask Natasha to meet us in the conference room.”

“Of course, Captain Rogers,” said JARVIS, making Clint flinch and look around.

“That's JARVIS,” Bucky told him. “He's, uh. He's a computer that helps run the place, I guess.”

“Like on Star Trek?” asked Sam.

“Sure,” said Bucky, trying to remember which of the sci-fi movies and shows he'd been told he had to watch that one was. Screw it, half of them had something like JARVIS.

Steve started heading for the door, and Sam suddenly realised that he was going. “No!” he shouted. “No! I want Captain America to stay!”

“I’ll be back soon,” said Steve, which Bucky could have told him wasn’t going to work. He didn’t have all his memories back, but he did remember that when his little sisters had hit that tone, they were already pretty irrational. 

“No! No! No!” shouted Sam, clenching his fists. “I want you to stay!”

“Bucky’s staying,” tried Steve. “He’s my best friend, you know. He’s just as good as I am.”

Sam’s face crumpled up into tears as Clint turned to stare at him. “You’re Bucky Barnes?”

“Yep,” said Bucky.

Clint scowled. “You’re dead, too.”

“Only emotionally and metaphorically,” said Bucky, which made Steve frown at him. Screw it, Clint would have found it funny, if he’d been an adult. And known what Bucky meant, because judging by the angry glare he was getting, this Clint had no idea what ‘metaphorically’ meant.

“Look,” Steve said to Sam, “I’m only going to be down the hall, and Bucky’s going to stay here. I swear, he’s actually a lot more fun than I am, most of the time.”

Sam didn’t look like he believed him, but his tears did quieten down to sniffles, especially when Steve gave him an awkward head pat. “Be good for him, and when we get back we’ll have that ice cream.”

That dried up the last of the tears, and then Bucky was left alone with two children. Tony gave him a look on his way out that made it clear he didn’t envy him at all.

Bucky didn’t really care. With the movie playing, it wasn’t as if he was going to have to entertain them.

Except, it didn’t take Bucky long to realise that Clint wasn’t paying as much attention to the movie as Sam was. He kept darting his eyes around the room, taking in every detail, but mostly he was watching Bucky. Bucky stayed as relaxed and non-threatening as he could manage. He probably should changed out of his combat gear at some point, but he couldn’t shake the thought that Clint and Sam couldn’t defend themselves like this, and he needed to be ready in case something happened.

What the hell might happen inside Avengers Tower, with the rest of the Avengers down the hall and JARVIS keeping an eye on security, he had no idea, but he’d long since accepted that some of his urges weren’t rational. That didn’t mean he needed to fight them.

The fifth time Clint flicked his eyes over to him, Bucky met his look and quirked an eyebrow. “You got a question, kid?”

Clint hesitated, then shook his head and trained his gaze back on the TV screen like he was kidding anyone.

“It’s okay if you do,” said Bucky, remembering when Clint had been the one telling him this, back in the first few weeks he’d been at the Tower. “No one’s ever going to get upset about you asking questions.”

Clint glanced back at him, biting at his lip, then he blurted out, “How old am I?”

Bucky frowned. “Nearly nine,” he said. “You told us, remember?”

Clint shook his head. “No, I mean— the big man said we’re younger now, which means we must have been older than this before, and you said you knew us but you didn’t know how old we are, and Sam’s mom isn’t here looking after him so he must have been old enough not to need her and you don’t know my parents at all but kids don’t have friends who are adults who don’t know their parents and—”

Okay, clearly he’d been paying no attention to the movie at all, and also Bucky needed to remember that just because he was smaller and quieter than the Clint he was used to didn’t mean he wasn’t just as smart.

Once Clint was done with the flood of words, he clammed up and stared at Bucky expectantly. Sam was also staring with wide eyes that meant he hadn’t made the same connections Clint had until just now.

“You said you wouldn’t be mad,” said Clint, sounding unsure, when Bucky couldn’t work out what to say.

He rubbed a hand over his face. “I’m not,” he said. “Not with you, anyway, I’m furious at the bitch that did this to you.”

“That’s a bad word,” said Sam, with awe.

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “Right,” he agreed.

Clint squirmed in his seat. “Were we adults?”

Bucky didn’t see any point in lying to them, and he couldn’t bring himself to anyway. “Yeah, you were,” he said, tiredly. “You both live here with us, as part of the team.”

“We’re on a team with Captain America?!” breathed Sam. “Oh, wow!”

Clint didn’t look happy, though. “You’re lying!” he said. “I hate liars!”

“I’m really not,” said Bucky. “Come on, you pretty much worked it out yourself.”

Clint shook his head. “No way I’m on a team with Captain America. You’re lying!”

“I don’t lie to you,” said Bucky. “I swear, you and me and Sam and Tony and—”

He didn’t get to finish. “No! Liar!” shouted Clint, and he jumped up off the sofa and took off running.

Bucky reacted without thinking, jumping after him and giving chase. He couldn’t let Clint run off into the Tower alone, to get lost or hurt. He caught him just before he got to the door to the bedrooms and grabbed his wrist.

“No!” howled Clint, yanking at his grip. “No, no, no!”

The look on his face was pure, mindless terror as he clawed at Bucky’s hand, pulling hard enough to wrench his arm.

Bucky immediately let go, the sick feeling of guilt rising up in his throat as he did what he should have done to start with. “JARVIS, lockdown.” Clint had flung himself at the door as soon as he was free, but not fast enough. The lock clicked into place as he scrabbled at the handle and he howled with frustration.

Bucky took a couple of steps back. “Clint, hey, Clint, calm down.”

Clint turned, setting his back to the door and staring at him as if he were a wild tiger. Bucky swallowed the lump in his throat and held his hands up, trying to look non-threatening.

“I’m sorry. Okay? I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t have grabbed for you like that.”

Clint didn’t say anything, he just flattened his palms against the door as if he could push backwards through it if he just tried hard enough.

Bucky took another step back from him. “Look, this is a big place, okay?” he tried. “There’s lots of places you could get lost or hurt. You can’t go running off.”

Clint’s eyes were wild, gazing around the room looking for an escape. 

“I hate you,” he said, which felt like a stab in the heart. “You lied to me.”

“I didn’t,” said Bucky, “I swear. I’ll never—”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence, because Clint took advantage of his distance to dash off again, heading for the kitchen area. Bucky let him go rather than grab at him, watching as he yanked open a cupboard, pulled all the saucepans out of it with a crash of metal, then dove inside, pulling the door shut behind him.

Bucky took a very deep breath. “JARVIS, is there anything in there that could hurt him?”

There was a pause. “I don’t believe so, Sergeant. Unless he bumps his head.”

That would have to do for now. 

“Okay,” said Bucky, loudly enough for Clint to hear through the cupboard door. “That’s okay, Clint. Sam and I are going to keep watching movies, you just come out when you’re ready.”

And then he went back to the sofa where Sam had watched the whole thing with wide eyes, and slumped down, wondering how the hell he’d managed to fuck this up so badly.

More than anything, he wanted adult Clint back so that he could talk this all out with him until he felt like it made sense, like he did with all the other shit that twisted his emotions up into knots.

He didn’t have that Clint though, and now he’d made the only Clint he did have hate him. Fucking typical.


	2. Chapter 2

Clint had more stamina than Bucky would have guessed for an eight year old. He stayed in the cupboard through the rest of movie and into the start of the next one, while Bucky forced himself to stay on the couch and tried to answer Sam's endless stream of questions.

“When will Captain America come back? Will he play with me? Do we play together when I'm old? Will he be my best friend? Can I see his shield again? Is your arm metal? Is it a robot arm? Does Captain America have a robot arm? Are we really having ice cream?”

Bucky had never fully appreciated just how exhausting children could be. By the time the others came back, he was ready to just dump all responsibility and go hole-up in his room.

Except Clint was still hiding away and he couldn’t leave him like that.

Steve looked tense when he came back, which was enough to tell Bucky just how the briefing had gone. He cleared the look off his face when Sam leapt to his feet and ran at him, though.

“Captain America!” he shouted with glee, and threw himself to hug Steve’s legs.

“I think you can probably call me Steve,” said Steve, bending down and picking Sam up, gathering him in his arms.

“Steve!” repeated Sam, shrilly enough to make Bucky wince.

Tony glanced around the room, then back at Bucky. “Okay, what did you do with the other one? Please tell me no one got murdered, we were gone less than an hour.”

“No one’s murdered,” said Bucky. He nodded at the kitchen. “He’s hiding in a cupboard.”

Tony glanced at the kitchen, then back at Bucky, raising an eyebrow.

Bucky sighed. “I told them they used to be adults, and were on the team.”

“Shouldn’t we have discussed that first?” said Steve.

Bucky ignored him, because he wasn’t interested in lying to Clint, not at any age. “Clint decided I was lying and got upset. Hiding seems to make him feel better.”

“I guess I can understand that,” said Tony. “Hiding always makes me feel better.” He was speaking loudly enough to be heard through a layer of wooden door as he headed towards the kitchen. “It’s a shame though, because he’s going to miss out on ice cream.”

“ICE CREAM!” chanted Sam, and Bucky did see Steve wince at that one.

Steve nodded his head at the door. “Go get changed, Bucky,” he said. “We’ve got this one.”

Bucky didn’t want to go. He wanted everyone else to fuck off so that he could sit by Clint’s cupboard and try and work out the combination of words that would make him come out, but he knew a losing battle when he saw one.

Before he made it to his room to change, Natasha cornered him. He raised an eyebrow at her. “You’re keeping a low profile.”

She shrugged, following him into his room. “I’m not cut out for being around children.”

“And I am?” asked Bucky, pointedly pulling a gun from its holster and dropping it on the bed.

“You’re cut out for being around Clint,” she said, which wasn’t the kind of thing Bucky knew how to respond to.

Instead, he concentrated on taking off the rest of his combat gear while Natasha lounged against a wall.

“What did Thor say?”

She shook her head. “Nothing useful. Amora is another Asgardian, a powerful enchantress, and she thinks Thor should marry her. Apparently she doesn’t take rejection well.”

Bucky let out a long sigh. “Right, of course.” He looked up from unbuckling his tac vest. “Jane Foster?”

“She’s being moved into protective custody,” said Natasha. “Thor said that he doesn’t think Amora will come back now he’s made it clear he’s not interested, though. He’s gone to Asgard to ask if anyone knows what spell she used on Clint and Sam.”

Bucky nodded. “I won’t hold my breath,” he said. “Seems like all the magic users on Asgard are batshit insane.”

“Thor said it was possible it would just wear off on its own,” said Natasha. “Apparently a permanent change is hard to accomplish without preparation, and that blast was clearly a whim on her part.”

Bucky pulled on a hoodie. He still had a handful of knives tucked around his person, but he looked enough like a civilian now that Steve wouldn’t frown at him. “Any idea how long that might take?”

“Of course not,” said Natasha. “When has magic ever worked to timelines we could track?”

Bucky returned her tired look. “Good point.” He glanced around the room, trying to think if there was anything he could take along that Clint would come out of the cupboard for, but there was nothing that struck him as kid-friendly. “Are you coming for ice cream?” he asked Natasha.

She shook her head. “It’s been agreed that they shouldn’t sleep in their current rooms. I’m going to set up a couple of the spare rooms for them.”

Bucky considered the state of Clint’s room the last time he’d seen it, clothes and arrows and half-empty coffee mugs everywhere. “Yeah, probably a good call.”

Back in the lounge, Tony and Steve had apparently managed to coax Clint out of the cupboard, and he and Sam were sitting at the kitchen table, eating bowls of ice cream that looked big enough for this to end badly. They had also managed to get them both out of their miniaturised combat gear and into the clothes Tony had bought, which meant they were both wearing Captain America shirts. Bucky was 90% sure that Tony wasn’t going to be allowed to go shopping for them again.

Clint went very still when Bucky came in, so he paused at the divide between the kitchen area and the lounge rather than going any closer and making him feel threatened.

“I’m really sorry about earlier,” he said, ignoring Steve’s frown. “I swear, I won’t touch you again unless you say it’s okay.”

Clint didn’t look as if he believed that for a second.

“How about after ice cream, I show you a better hiding place than the kitchen cupboard?” added Bucky, because he’d taken the time to think about this.

“Ah,” said Tony. “Is that really a good idea?”

Bucky didn’t look away from Clint. “I’ll show you the whole floor, and we can pick out a couple of places where you can go and no one will bother you unless you want them to, okay?”

Clint clenched his jaw for a moment, then nodded, and Bucky relaxed. “Great. And now I want some ice cream, because it’s been a shit day.”

Sam gasped. “That’s a bad word!”

Steve started laughing and Bucky rolled his eyes as he sat down and pulled a bowl towards himself. “If you’re going to say that every time I swear, you’re not going to have a lot of time to say anything else.”

Tony passed him the ice cream carton. “I think the normal thing is to try and watch your mouth around the kids. I mean, I don’t know much about normal, or about kids, but I do know that much.”

“As if it matters. It’s just new vocabulary, right?” said Bucky.

Steve sighed and rubbed at his forehead. “Please don’t teach them a bunch of swear words, Bucky. Just… think about what your mom would say about it.”

Bucky snorted, then looked at Clint. “Want a lesson on some new words while we’re doing our tour?”

For a moment he thought Clint wasn’t going to answer because he stared down at his ice cream rather than meet Bucky’s eyes, but after a heart-stopping pause, Clint said, “I bet I know them all already.”

Steve groaned and Tony laughed as Bucky grinned at him. “I bet you do,” he agreed. “I bet you know a bunch.”

“I know some too!” said Sam, apparently changing his stance on swearing in an eyeblink. “I know lots!”

Clint snorted. “Yeah, baby? Your mom teach them to you while she was making you cookies?”

“Okay!” said Tony, interrupting before the inevitable fight could begin. “Let’s all just take a moment and not call each other names and, oh, I know what I was going to ask, Clint! Hearing aids!”

Clint flinched back and actually put his hands over his ears as if to protect them. “No,” he said. “You can’t have them!”

Tony blinked at him, then carried on as if nothing had happened, although Bucky could hear the brittle edge to his voice. “Those aids were made using adult you as a model, I wanted to check they were still working okay. Your hearing almost certainly changed over the last few decades, not to mention that the electronics really weren’t designed to be shrunk down to fit your itty-bitty kid ears. How does it all sound? Any buzzing, fuzziness? I’m guessing they still work okay because you’ve been hearing us okay, yeah?”

Clint’s hands slowly moved away from his ears. “They’re okay,” he said. 

Tony waited a moment for more, then prompted when it didn’t come. “Just okay? Come on, give me a little more than that. I need to know if I should be making you a new pair immediately, or if it can wait until we’ve worked out how long you’re going to be munchkin-sized.”

Clint stared at him. “You made them?”

“Yep,” said Tony, with the grin he reserved for his creations. “Custom-made Starktech hearing aids. Only the best for my favourite archer. Seriously, kid, if they’re off at all, let me know and I’ll tune them up.”

Clint nodded, still looking awed. “They’re okay,” he said again, then added, “Better than my normal ones.”

Tony’s grin widened. “Okay, great. I shoulda known that my tech was totally awesome enough to stand up to weird age-regressing magical crap.”

Sam was staring at Clint over the top of his bowl of ice cream. “You can’t hear?”

Clint scowled at him, his mood apparently changing on a dime again. Bucky wondered how he didn’t get emotional whiplash. “Shut up,” he hissed.

Sam’s face started to crease into misery again. Bucky felt his eye twitch in anticipation of the noise he was clearly about to make.

Tony saved the day again. “Hey, Sam, what do you want to do after ice cream, if Bucky’s taking his sniper-bro off to find hidey holes?”

“I want to play with Captain America!” announced Sam, all traces of misery washed away. Clint slumped back in his chair, apparently disappointed not to have caused a reaction. Bucky should probably try and work out how to get him to stop picking on Sam so much. “We can play that we’re fighting Hydra! I want to throw your shield!”

Bucky watched Steve wince. “Steve,” he said. “My name’s Steve. And I think after all this ice cream we should probably do something quiet, does that sound okay? How about drawing?”

“I love drawing,” said Sam, happily.

“Me too,” said Steve, looking relieved. Bucky wondered how long it would take him to realise that it was only a temporary reprieve, and that sooner or later, he was going to end up playing make believe about his own life with the kid version of one of his best friends.

He noticed Tony smirking to himself and caught his eye, gesturing at the nearest camera. Tony gave a firm nod and Bucky returned his smirk. There wasn’t a lot that he and Tony agreed on, but getting footage of Steve looking like an idiot was definitely one of them.

Clint set his spoon down in his bowl, then looked at Bucky.

“All finished?” asked Bucky, and he nodded. He didn’t look entirely sure, but Bucky was pretty sure his desire to have somewhere to run to outstripped his distrust of Bucky.

“Come on then,” said Bucky, standing up. “Let’s find you some nests.”

Clint kept out of Bucky’s arm-reach as they walked around the floor, which made sense even as it hurt. He was going to have to work hard to prove to Clint —and himself— that he could be trusted around a kid.

He showed Clint the whole floor, which pretty much consisted of the lounge and kitchen area, then bedrooms for everyone. All the training and equipment rooms were on the floor below, which Bucky figured was not a good place to take him right now, no matter how much he’d probably love the climbing wall and assault course in the gym.

He found the two spare rooms that Natasha had set up for Sam and Clint, although she was nowhere around. Bucky wondered how long she was going to keep hiding.

“Okay, this is where you’re going to be sleeping,” he said to Clint. Natasha had made up the bed and put some toiletries in the en-suite, but it still looked very bland, like a hotel room. Clint blinked around at it. “Is there anything else you think you’ll want?” He searched his mind for what kids had in their rooms. “A teddy bear or something?”

Clint sent him a deeply scathing look. “Sam’s the baby,” he said.

“Yeah, about that,” said Bucky. “Do you think you could stop calling him that to his face? It upsets him, and then he gets loud.”

Clint scowled. “He’s stupid.”

“He’s younger than you,” said Bucky. “I’m sorry to tell you, but that means you need to be the sensible one, and not go jerking his chain just because you can.”

Clint’s scowl deepened. “That’s what Mom says to Barney,” he muttered. “It doesn’t stop Barney from being a dick to me.”

“Guess you need to prove you’re better than Barney, then,” said Bucky, ignoring the swear word because he really didn’t care about Clint’s vocabulary. Clint wasn’t going to be a kid for very long, so what did it matter what words he used?

He looked around the room again. “Hey, how about a picture or something? What do you like? You said you climb trees, right? JARVIS, can you project a picture of a tree on the wall?”

“Of course, Sergeant,” said JARVIS, and a moment later, a large image of a tree appeared on one wall.

Clint stared at it with wide eyes, then back up at the ceiling. “Is he always there?”

“Yep,” said Bucky. “He looks after us all. Any time you need anything, or have any questions, you can just ask him.”

“I will be happy to help,” said JARVIS.

Clint looked at the tree again, then at one of the other walls. “I like dogs.”

A moment later, a picture of a dog appeared. Clint smiled, and Bucky realised it was the first time he’d seen him smile since he’d been sent thirty years into his past. Even the pizza hadn’t made him smile.

What kind of kid didn’t smile? Shit, Bucky hated this so much. He wanted his Clint back, the one who was always cracking jokes and pulling pranks and giving Bucky soft, warm smiles whenever they kissed that made Bucky wanted to wrap him up in his arms and never let go.

Clint’s smile didn’t last long, but Bucky was determined to try and coax another one from him.

They put the bed on blocks so that there was enough space for an eight-year-old to crawl under and hide where he couldn’t be reached by adult arms, then found that the top shelf of the linen closet went back far enough for them to make a cubby hole behind a pile of blankets that Clint could climb up the other shelves to get to. Bucky had a feeling it wasn’t what the health and safety guys would approve of, but Clint said it was easier to climb than his favourite tree at home, so he didn’t see the harm in it.

“Where’s the bedroom I have as an adult?” asked Clint as they left the linen cupboard and Bucky tried to work out where else they could find Clint a safe space that wasn’t going to get in everyone’s way.

Bucky hesitated, but there didn’t seem any reason in not showing him, as long as he watched and made sure he didn’t touch anything he shouldn’t. “This way.”

Clint stopped in the doorway and just stared at the mess of his adult bedroom. “Why is everything purple?”

“You love purple,” said Bucky, then frowned. “I guess that should be that you _will_ love purple.”

Clint shook his head. “No. No, I don’t, I _can’t_. Purple’s for girls!”

“Not so much,” said Bucky. “It’s for whoever likes it, like Tony said.”

Clint shook his head furiously. “It’s for girls and poofs and no Barton’s ever gonna be a poof!” he said, in an increasingly hysterical voice.

Bucky’s heart broke a little, but he forced himself to stay calm and not think about somehow going back in time to punch out whoever had said that to Clint. “Sorry, both wrong. See, your best friend’s a girl, Natasha, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her wear purple. Mostly she wears black.” He took a deep breath and carried on as casually as he could, “And I’m a poof, and I only wear purple when I’ve borrowed one of your hoodies.”

Clint stared at him with wide eyes. “You’re not a poof,” he said. “You said you were Bucky Barnes. Bucky Barnes wasn’t a poof, he fought Nazis.”

“I’ve got news for you, kid,” said Bucky, pushing his hands in his pockets to hide how tense he was. “Lots of poofs fought Nazis.”

Clint stared for a moment longer, then turned and kicked the nearest piece of furniture, which was the closet. Bucky winced for his toes, but Clint didn’t even react to the pain. “You keep lying!” he shouted. “I hate you!”

He turned and ran, and Bucky let him go. He pulled the bedroom door shut. “Can you lock that, JARVIS? Best if the kids keep out of it.”

“Of course,” said JARVIS.

“And, can you keep an eye on Clint? Let me know if he looks like he’s getting himself into trouble.”

“Of course,” said JARVIS. “He is currently on the shelf in the linen closet.”

Bucky nodded to himself and headed to his own bedroom. He kinda wanted to curl up in his own nest and cry out his frustration.

****

“I’m afraid that Mr Stark is insisting that everyone be present for dinner,” said JARVIS apologetically a couple of hours later, just as Bucky was considering staying hidden away until Clint was an adult again because all he seemed to be doing was upsetting him every time they talked.

Bucky groaned. “I bet Natasha’s not going,” he said, thinking about how careful Natasha had been to stay out of sight of Clint and Sam since the spell hit them.

“Mr Stark has managed to persuade her,” said JARVIS.

Bucky sighed, because if Tony was serious enough to talk Natasha around, Bucky didn’t have a hope of staying away unless he left the Tower, and there was no way he was going to leave Clint without his protection. “Tell him I’m on my way.”

Dinner was sandwiches and salad, which Clint was giving a very suspicious look when Bucky came in. 

“Hey, Bucky,” said Steve, sounding relieved. He was cutting the crusts off a sandwich for Sam, who was sitting next to him on what looked like a couple of cushions. Natasha was watching with a blank look that could have been hiding anything.

“Hey,” said Bucky, sitting down next to Tony and glancing around. “Is Thor coming?”

“He’s gone to Asgard to ask around to see if anyone has any ideas on how to end the spell,” said Natasha.

Bucky looked around at the remaining adult members of the Avengers. “Doesn’t that leave us a bit short-handed?”

“Rhodey’s flying in tonight,” said Tony, clapping his hands together with pleasure. “I haven’t told him why we’re down a couple of guys, though, I kinda want to see his face when he walks in to find the mini-mes here.”

Bucky didn’t know Rhodey all that well, but he wanted to see that as well.

“Are you having salad, Clint?” he asked, mostly to see the disgusted look on his face.

“No,” said Clint, with a glare that made it clear he wasn’t budging on that one.

“You probably should. That’s how I grew up big and strong, you know,” said Steve with the note of false heartiness that he always used with kids. Bucky could have told him that it wouldn’t work on Clint, who just screwed his face up and shook his head.

Tony snorted. “You grew up big and strong by letting a team that included my father inject you with an unknown number of chemicals. That’s not a life plan anyone should be following.” He fixed Clint and then Sam with a serious look. “Kids, don’t let strangers pump you full of drugs and shoot you up with gamma radiation.”

“Tony,” said Steve, tiredly.

“What?” said Tony. “That’s some very valid life advice there.”

“What’s gamma rad-i-ation?” asked Sam, sounding the word out slowly. Tony’s eyes lit up at the chance to impart science knowledge.

There was a flicker of movement in the corner of Bucky’s eye: Clint’s hand darting to hide one of his sandwiches away in his pocket while he glanced around to make sure he hadn’t been noticed. Bucky pretended not to have seen anything, looking over at Natasha, who crooked an eyebrow to show she’d noticed as well.

****

Natasha stayed long enough after dinner to clear up, then disappeared again. Bucky was tempted to do the same, but one look at Clint’s slump on the sofa as he watched Sam babble away at Steve was enough to keep him in the room. He made popcorn and brought it over to sit next to him, glancing at Tony.

“What are we watching?”

“Ask the kids,” said Tony, which had to be the only time Bucky had ever seen him let someone else pick the movie without a major argument first.

“ _Home Alone_!” said Sam immediately, clapping his hands together.

A scowl overtook Clint’s face. “I hate _Home Alone_ ,” he muttered.

Bucky held the popcorn out to him. Clint eyed it suspiciously, but took a handful. “What do you want to watch then?”

Clint just shrugged. “I don’t care. Not some stupid kid getting forgotten about by his stupid family.”

Bucky felt his metal hand clench into a fist as a look passed over Tony’s face that reflected his own emotions.

“ _The Goonies_!” said Tony, clapping his hands. “Everyone loves _The Goonies_ , nothing quite like a bunch of kids having an adventure and saving the day and all that.”

“I like _The Goonies_ ,” said Sam.

Bucky glanced at Clint, who shrugged. “It’s okay.”

That seemed like the best they were going to get, so Tony got JARVIS to set it playing, then threw himself onto a couch with a Starkpad in his hand.

Bucky barely paid attention to the movie. Anger coursed through him as he added up all Clint's behaviour since the spell: the flinching, the distrust, the terror when Bucky had grabbed his wrist, his hesitancy to take food and the way he'd hidden away that sandwich. None of it added up to anything good.

There was no way for him to fix it, though. Clint, his Clint, had already lived through it all and come out the other side. He'd overcome whatever shadows it had left in order to become an Avenger, one who loved purple and men and didn't care what anyone else thought about either.

God, Bucky wanted that Clint back so badly. 

He didn't have him, though. All he had was this angry, suspicious kid. And he'd done nothing but fuck things up with him. He had to start doing better.

Bucky held the popcorn out to Clint again. Clint took a handful big enough for kernels to drop in his lap.

“Oh!” gasped Sam, pointing at the balcony. “Another robot!”

Rhodey had landed in his suit and was staring through the windows at them.

“Not a robot,” said Tony, grinning and waving. “That's Rhodey, my best friend.” 

Rhodey stepped out of his armour and came inside.

“What the hell?” he asked, gesturing at Clint and Sam. “Tony, what did you _do_?”

“Why do you always assume it was me?” asked Tony. “Platypus, why do you hurt me like this?”

“Because I know you,” growled Rhodey. He looked at Clint and Sam again, and Bucky saw the exact moment he recognised them, because his eyes widened. “Oh. Oh hell, please tell me they’re not— Oh man.”

Sam was pressing himself closer to Steve, staring at Rhodey with wide eyes. Bucky looked at Clint, who seemed tense, as if preparing to leap off the sofa and make a bid for one of his hiding places.

“Rhodey’s a friend,” he told them. Clint didn’t relax at all, which he probably should have expected. Clint seemed to need to make his own judgements on people before he trusted them. Not that he’d shown any signs that he trusted any of them yet — but that had to just be a matter of time, right?

“Did you know us when we were old as well?” asked Sam.

Rhodey let out a very long sigh, shoulders slumping. “Yeah, kid. I know you,” he said. “Me and you, we’re Air Force buddies.”

Sam’s eyes lit up and he glanced at Steve. “I’m in the Air Force?”

“You were,” said Steve.

“I fly planes?” asked Sam, vibrating with excitement.

“All kinds,” said Steve. “You do a lot of flying.”

“Oh, WOW,” said Sam.

Rhodey looked up at the ceiling. “Why do I even hang around with you guys?” he asked. “This kinda thing never happens with my other friends.”

Tony made a disgusted noise. “Those guys don’t give you all the shiny toys, either,” he said. “C’mon, sit down and watch _The Goonies_ , and stop acting like you’re too sensible for us when you just crossed the country in a flying metal can because I offered you the chance to beat up some bad guys.”

Clint fidgeted, and Bucky glanced at him to see that he was clutching his hands into fists, giving Rhodey a suspicious look. 

He had no idea what to say to make him feel better about having yet another strange person turn up just when he was starting to relax, so he held out the popcorn bowl instead. Clint glanced at him, flicked his eyes back to Rhodey as he sat down, then relaxed enough to take some popcorn.

Bucky decided to count it as a victory.

It felt like even more of a victory half an hour later, when Clint had relaxed enough to laugh at some stupid joke in the movie. Fuck, he missed hearing Clint laugh at the lamest things.

By the time the movie ended, Sam was half-asleep against Steve, blinking tired eyes at the credits, and Clint was slumped back against the sofa, knees curled up in front of him.

“Bedtime, I think,” said Steve.

“No!” protested Sam, sitting up and opening his eyes wide as if he could kid anyone that he wasn’t falling asleep already. “I can stay up.”

“Sure you can, kid, but how about instead Captain America reads you a story and tucks you in, so tomorrow we can go to the park,” said Tony, and Jesus, Bucky wished he’d stop pulling things out of his ass to bribe the kids with because now they were going to have to work out how to take an Avengers group outing to the park without anyone noticing that two of them were now kids.

From the half-hearted glare Steve sent him, he was sick of being used as bribery material as well. Bucky kinda thought he’d brought that one on himself by not drawing a line earlier.

“Okay,” mumbled Sam around a yawn.

Bucky looked at Clint. “You want to listen to the story as well?”

Clint turned to stare at him as if he were talking a foreign language. “It’s not my bedtime,” he said. “I’m not a baby. I don’t have a bedtime.”

“You do here,” said Steve, standing up and then bending to pick Sam up. “You can come and listen to the story in Sam’s room once you’re in your pyjamas.”

Clint shook his head. “I don’t need a _story_ ,” he muttered.

“Okay,” said Steve, easily. “Good night, then. I hope you sleep well.” He walked out carrying Sam pressed against his shoulder and damnit, there better be photos of this from JARVIS, that right there was going to keep Bucky entertained for years once Sam was back to being an adult.

Bucky stood up and looked at Clint. “Come on, let’s go find where Natasha put your pyjamas.”

Clint stood up, shaking his head. “I don’t need _help_ ,” he said. “I’ve been putting myself to bed for years.” He stomped off out of the room and Bucky let him go, taking a deep breath.

“He’s pretty angry,” noted Rhodey.

“Yeah,” agreed Tony. “I think we all need to just appreciate how many anger issues our baby Legolas has overcome, once he’s back to his normal self.”

Bucky wasn’t interested in listening to them talking about Clint behind his back, so he headed for the kitchen. In the pantry, he pulled out a box of protein bars and then, after a moment’s thought, a second one. He took them to Clint’s temporary bedroom, knocking on the door.

There was a pause, then Clint’s voice echoed through the wood. “Go away!”

Bucky sighed. “I’ve got a present for you,” he called back.

There was another pause, then the door opened, and Clint glared at him.

Bucky held up the boxes. “I figured they’d be better than hiding sandwiches in your pockets to go stale. They make a lot less mess.”

Clint flushed pink and drew into himself. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“No apologies,” said Bucky. “Seriously, you only need to apologise when you hurt someone.” He considered. “Or make Sam cry, because that’s loud.” That drew a reluctant smile out of Clint, which Bucky added to the column of tiny victories. “I get that it’s easier to know you’ve got some food you don’t need to rely on someone else for, okay? So I got you a box you can keep in here, and one for your nest in the linen cupboard. Just, if I can get that sandwich back so we can throw it out, I’d feel better. I really don’t like the idea of it going mouldy hidden away somewhere.”

Clint nodded, and pulled the sandwich out of his pocket, holding it out to Bucky. Bucky handed him the boxes of protein bars before he took it, feeling a little like he was at a hostage exchange. “Thanks,” he said.

Clint hugged the boxes to himself. “Do I really have to go to bed?” he asked.

Bucky shrugged. “No one has to know if you’re awake in there. Just stay quiet and don’t go running around. Maybe think about putting your pyjamas on and cleaning your teeth in case you do end up dropping off, but JARVIS can put on a movie for you, or sort you out a book to read, or whatever.”

“He won’t tell on me?” asked Clint, glancing up at the ceiling.

“My purpose is to assist the Tower residents with anything they need,” said JARVIS. “I will only alert the others if you are distressed or in danger.”

Clint looked uncertain about that, but Bucky figured he’d only find out how true it was through experience. He managed a smile for Clint. “I’m going to hit the hay, though,” he said, because he wanted to hide away in bed and try not to think about how he was meant to be on a date with adult Clint right now. “So, good night. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Clint nodded. “Good night,” he echoed, then shut the door.

Bucky let out a very long breath and headed for his own room. What he really wanted to do was go punch his frustration out in the gym, but that would mean being on a different floor to Clint, and he couldn’t shake the protective urge to keep close to him, even if there was no way anything could hurt him inside the Tower.

****

Hours later, Bucky was still lying awake in bed, staring at the dark ceiling and trying not to get lost down the rabbit hole of imagining a future where Clint never returned to his adult age, and they had to bring him up in the Tower. Or would they find him a foster family or something? Except that didn’t seem safe, given how many bad guys would probably be gunning for Clint once they knew he was vulnerable.

Having a kid hanging around the Tower wasn’t exactly safe either. This wasn’t the kind of place people meant when they talked about a safe and secure environment, and it wasn’t like any of them were really cut out to be parents.

Fuck, they couldn’t be worse than Clint’s actual parents, though. And Bucky did like the idea of getting to show Clint that other people could actually be trusted, and not everyone was out to get him. He wanted Clint to get used to having food whenever he wanted it, and that the adults around him wouldn’t ever hurt him, no matter how mad they got.

But he didn’t want that even a fraction as much as he wanted to be able to take adult Clint out on that date, to grin at him across a restaurant table and hold his hand and kiss him at the end of the night with all the affection he could feel bottled up in his chest.

Fuck, this whole thing was horrible.

“Sergeant Barnes, Master Barton is attempting to leave the Tower,” said JARVIS.

Bucky sat up immediately. “What?” he asked, jumping out of bed. “Where?”

“He is at the elevator,” said JARVIS, and Bucky sprinted out of his room.

“I apologise,” said JARVIS as Bucky ran down the corridor. “He was asking questions about his family, and my programming stipulates that I respond to all queries as accurately as possible.”

Clint’s family. Fuck. Bucky felt his hands clench into fists as he made it to the lounge door, then he forcibly made them relax, and slowed his pace. He did his best to wipe his emotions off his face, because the last thing he wanted was to terrify Clint. Not again.

Clint was trying to pry the doors of the elevator doors open, a backpack sitting at his feet. “Let me out, you stupid computer,” he was saying with frustration. “You can’t keep me prisoner here.”

“You’re not a prisoner,” said Bucky, and Clint whirled around, hands going up defensively.

Bucky kept his distance, trying to look as relaxed as he could. “It’s just a bit late at night for a kid to go wandering off alone.”

Clint scowled. “You!” he snapped. “You keep lying to me!”

Oh great, they were back to this. “I promise you, Clint, everything I’ve told you today has been true,” said Bucky. “I don’t lie to my friends.”

“I’m not your friend!” snapped Clint. “I’m nothing like that guy you keep talking about! I don’t know archery and I don’t like purple and I can’t be on a team with Captain America and nothing in that room was mine and…” The further he’d got through his list, the more emotional he’d got, until he was sobbing too hard to speak. Bucky wanted nothing more than to wrap him up in a hug, but that would be a terrible idea right now.

He couldn’t stop himself from holding a hand out to him though, even if it was too far away to come anywhere near him. “I get it,” he said. “It’s confusing as hell, right? You don’t remember all this stuff that we all take for granted. I get that. I really get that, I’ve been there. But here’s the thing. You are like him, you just don’t see it. Clint — the Clint I know — loves pizza and dogs and being up high, where he can see everything but no one can see him.”

Clint sniffed, rubbing angrily at his eyes. “You’re lying,” he said, in a thick voice. “You didn’t tell me my parents are dead.”

Bucky couldn’t help wincing at that. “Yeah, okay,” he agreed. “We didn’t lie, though, we just figured it might be better if you didn’t find out about that just yet, not until we knew whether or not the spell was going to wear off.”

Clint shook his head violently. “Barney’s still alive,” he said. “The computer told me! Why didn’t you call Barney?”

It took Bucky a few moments to even remember who Barney was, and then he could only shrug helplessly. “Clint, the entire time I’ve known you, you’ve never once even mentioned Barney, let alone talked to him. It didn’t even cross my mind.”

“No!” screamed Clint and, shit, he was going to drag the others out here if he kept making a noise, and then this would really turn into a drama. “Barney cares about me! We’re brothers, that means we watch out for each other.” He glared at Bucky. “You don’t know me, you don’t know anything about me. You’ve got me confused with some other Clint.” He turned back to the elevator and hit at it. “I want to go find Barney.”

“No, you’re the right Clint,” said Bucky. He cast around for something that would convince him. “Hey, look. You said you didn’t recognise anything in his bedroom, right? How about if I show you it again, and show you where you are?”

Clint stared at him distrustfully. “Will you let me go after that?”

Bucky rubbed a hand over his face. “Hell, kid. No, because it’s the middle of the goddamn night, and Manhattan is no place for a kid running about on his own. Plus you don’t have any idea where Barney is, and I can’t imagine your bag’s got more in it than a spare sweater and some protein bars. How about, no matter what, we try and find a telephone number or something for Barney? JARVIS can do a search, see what he can turn up.”

Clint straightened up, then nodded.

“Search for contact details and last known whereabouts of Charles Bernard Barton has been started,” said JARVIS. “Results will most likely not be ready until the morning.”

Thank fuck for JARVIS.

“Okay, I guess we can maybe call him in the morning, then,” said Bucky. “Which means we can go to bed now. After I show you the parts of Clint’s bedroom that you’ll recognise.”

Clint scowled, but picked up his bag and put it over his shoulder. “Won’t be anything,” he muttered, but low enough that Bucky could pretend he hadn’t heard.

This time when they opened the door to Clint’s room, it was Bucky who strode in and Clint who hung back in the doorway.

“Look, here,” said Bucky, going over to the jumble of mismatched photo frames that covered a shelf.

Clint trailed after him. “I don’t know any of those people.”

“No,” agreed Bucky, searching through the various photos of the team and Natasha and Clint’s old SHIELD handler, trying to ignore the one of him and Clint laughing together at the range that must have been taken from JARVIS’s cameras, and picked up the one he’d been looking for. “Here.”

He handed it to Clint. “It’s a dog,” he said.

“Right,” said Bucky. “Your dog.”

Clint’s head shot up with wide eyes. “Mine?”

“You share him with a friend, who’s looking after him in LA at the moment,” said Bucky. “He’s called Lucky.”

Clint looked back at the photo, touching it with his fingers. “Why’s he only got one eye?”

“He got hurt, and you looked after him until he got better,” said Bucky.

Clint stared at it for a moment longer, then pushed it back at Bucky. “Lots of people like dogs,” he said.

Right, of course this wasn’t going to be that easy.

Bucky put the photo back on the shelf. “I’m not meant to know about the next bit,” he said. “And I’m definitely not meant to be telling anyone else, but I figure you can keep a secret. No one else can know about this, okay?”

“Okay,” said Clint, looking curiously around the room.

Bucky stepped on the bed and lifted the air vent cover off the wall, setting it down and then waving a hand at Clint. “Can you get up on your own, or do you need a boost?”

Clint was staring at the hole in the wall like it was the second coming. “I can do it,” he said, and climbed onto the bed, scrambling up to the vent by treading on the top of the headboard and pulling himself up with stronger arms than Bucky would have figured, given he hadn’t been trained at the circus yet. Apparently all that tree-climbing was good for something.

Inside the vent, Clint hesitated. “What now?” he asked, his voice bouncing weirdly off the metal walls.

“Turn left at the junction,” said Bucky. He waited until Clint had shuffled far enough into the tunnel to put a bit of space between them, then pulled himself up afterwards.

It wasn’t nearly as dark in the vent as it should have been, given that most vents weren’t designed to be crawled around in. But then, there was no reason for the vent to be large enough for a grown man to move through without issue either, which made Bucky think there had been a lot of specialisation when it came to the air system in the Tower.

He knew the exact moment that Clint saw where they were headed, because he let out a loud gasp, then sped up. By the time Bucky had caught up, he was already curled up in the nest that adult Clint had put up here in the space where two vents met and widened out before ending in a metal hatch, which Bucky guessed was something to do with access to the elevator systems for maintenance.

There was a pillow, a couple of blankets and a battered book on top of a box. The fact that the blankets and the pillow were all purple didn’t seem to have put Clint off the space.

“This is awesome,” he breathed.

“Yeah,” agreed Bucky, easing off his knees and onto his ass so he could sit properly. “You set it up, because I guess you never lose your love of hidey holes.” He nodded at the grill next to Clint’s head. “Or being able to see without being seen.”

Clint bent his head to the grill and made a quiet noise of realisation as he took in the view of the lounge.

It had been that grill that had alerted Bucky to the fact this place existed, back when he’d first moved in and was still twitchy with paranoia, unable to stop scanning every room for threats. He’d known he was being watched in the lounge, but it had taken him longer than he was prepared to admit to to realise it was coming from here. He’d waited until the middle of the night to quietly remove the grill, and realised it was Clint’s den.

He’d never told Clint he’d found it, but he had a feeling he hadn’t needed to.

When Clint looked back at Bucky, he was scowling again. Bucky internally sighed, wondering if he was ever going to catch a break with this kid. “You didn’t show me this place when we were looking for places earlier.”

“No,” agreed Bucky. “Like I said, it’s a secret that I’m not meant to know about. Plus, the only way to get into it is from the bedroom, and it’s not such a great idea to let you have free runaround in there. There’s a lot of weapons stashed about.”

Clint considered that. “Can I come up here again?”

Bucky shook his head, and Clint’s face shut down. He curled up into himself, hugging his legs. “This is so much better than the linen closet. People can still get me in the linen closet.”

The kid had a point. Bucky sighed, rubbing at his face. He knew telling Clint that no one was going to be able to get into the Tower who’d want to hurt him wouldn’t make any difference. Hell, some nights even Bucky couldn’t make himself believe that and ended up prowling around the place with a gun in one hand.

“Okay, tell you what, you can’t come up here all the time, but if ever anyone’s threatening to hurt you, you run to the door and JARVIS will let you in,” said Bucky. “I’ll let him know.”

Clint nodded, reluctantly.

“That’s not why I brought you here, though,” said Bucky, moving over to the box and putting the book to one side. “I brought you here because you said you didn’t recognise anything of yourself in Clint’s bedroom, right?” He opened the box and pulled out the contents he’d guessed would be inside. “But look,” he said, holding up the handful of protein bars. “I know of at least three other stashes around the place, which probably means there’s twice as many that I haven’t found.”

Clint held out a hand and Bucky passed one over. He stared at it, then said, in an awed voice. “Chocolate is my favourite too.”

Bucky decided not to tell him that chocolate was most people’s favourite, and dumped the rest of the bars back in the box. “I told you. You’re the right Clint. You’re my friend, and I swear, I’ll never lie to you.”

Clint clutched the bar to his chest, then nodded. “Okay,” he said.

Bucky let out a sigh of relief. “Okay, great. Think that means we can go down and go back to bed, then?”

Clint nodded, and followed as Bucky crawled back down the vents to Clint’s room, dropping down onto the bed and then turning back, arms automatically going to help Clint.

Clint hesitated and Bucky let his arms drop a couple of inches. “I’m just gonna lift you down.”

A second later Clint nodded, and it felt like being handed a gift. Maybe Bucky hadn’t completely fucked this up, he thought as he took hold of Clint under his armpits and lifted him down to the floor.

“And tomorrow we’ll find Barney,” said Clint as Bucky shut the door to the bedroom.

Right, that. “Sure,” said Bucky. “You know he’s going to be a grown up though, right?”

“He’s still my brother,” said Clint, stubbornly.

God, Bucky really hoped Barney still had the same attitude, or things were going to get really messy.

He took Clint back to his bedroom and said good night again, then pulled the door shut and collapsed back against the wall of the corridor, rubbing at his face. He hated everything about this.

“JARVIS, let me know if he leaves his room again tonight,” he said.

“Of course,” said JARVIS. “I have also amended access to Agent Barton’s bedroom, as per your instructions.”

Okay, great. Then it was definitely time for Bucky to go back to bed and start hoping like hell that Thor turned up with a remedy before breakfast.


	3. Chapter 3

When Bucky woke up the next morning, it took him a moment to open his eyes because he really didn’t want to have to face the reality of this mess with Clint and Sam, not to mention the rash promise he’d made about calling Barney.

When he did open his eyes, he found Clint standing next to his bed, and startled backwards.

“Jesus fucking Christ! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“Can we call Barney now?” asked Clint, apparently completely unaware that startling a half-asleep super-soldier with PTSD was a bad idea.

Bucky let out two or three long breaths, like his therapist said he should do before he reacted to shit, and then sat up, pushing his hair out of his face. “What the fuck time even is it?”

Clint shrugged. Bucky took a moment to actually look at him and noticed that he was standing just out of Bucky's reach, shifting on his toes as if he were prepared for a quick getaway. He was wearing the same clothes as yesterday and Bucky wondered if he’d ever bothered putting pyjamas on at all.

Bucky made himself relax back against the headboard, trying to look less scary. “JARVIS?”

“It is six forty three,” said JARVIS. 

“Christ,” muttered Bucky. “Your brother isn't going to appreciate a call this early.”

It was the wrong thing to say. 

“He will if it's from me,” said Clint, and then he actually stamped his foot. “You promised!”

He didn't sound as angry as he probably wanted to, more just resigned, and that was what decided Bucky. He wasn't about to be another adult that Clint couldn't trust. 

“Yeah, okay,” he said. “JARVIS, how did the search go?”

“Charles Bernard Barton is currently in the Ohio State Penitentiary,” said JARVIS. 

Oh great.

Clint's eyes opened wide. “He's in prison?”

“Mr Barton is serving twelve years for armed robbery and assault,” said JARVIS.

Well, that was just about perfect. “JARVIS, can you get hold of the warden as soon as he's at work, and let him know the Avengers need a favour?” said Bucky.

“No!” said Clint. “I want to talk to Barney now!”

“He won't have a phone,” said Bucky. “We need to ask the Warden to let him speak to us.”

“No!” shouted Clint again, “No, no, no!”

He turned and ran, and Bucky automatically started to chase after him before he thought better of it.

“JARVIS.”

“Master Barton has gone to the linen closet,” said JARVIS. 

Thank fuck that they were doing this with an omnipresent computer keeping an eye out. Bucky had no idea how regular parents did it.

He took a very deep breath and left Clint to sulk, and went to take a shower instead. When he was dressed, he headed out to the kitchen, thinking that breakfast was probably the best way to tempt Clint into coming out of his nest.

Rhodey was already there, mixing up batter. “I figured family breakfast with waffles,” he said. “Before we try and figure out this trip to the park that Tony thought was a good idea.”

Bucky groaned. “I'd forgotten about that. Do you think we can just take them up on the roof and pretend it's a park?”

“I don't see them buying it,” said Rhodey.

“Sergeant Barnes, I have the warden on the phone,” said JARVIS. 

Bucky took a moment to slide into his best official Avengers persona. “Okay, put him through.”

Sweet-talking officials into breaking the rules was always more Steve's thing than Bucky's, but thankfully Bucky had picked up enough tricks over the year to be able to convince the warden that getting Barney out of his cell and next to a phone was somehow vital to the fate of the world, without actually saying that.

“Do I want to know?” asked Rhodey once the warden had hung up with a promise to call back when Barney was in his office.

Bucky shook his head. “Kids are exhausting,” he said, and went to try and persuade Clint out of the linen closet.

****

The warden didn't call back until the team were all up and eating waffles. Bucky had asked JARVIS to put it through to his cell, so he was able to just slip out while Clint was distracted.

“I've got Barton here,” said the warden.

“Great, thanks,” said Bucky. “Hand him the phone, and then clear the room. This is highly confidential.”

The warden wasn't keen on that, but he did it anyway.

“What the hell is this about?” asked Barney, and Bucky hadn't really been prepared for how similar his voice would be to Clint’s.

Or the voice Clint would have when he went back to being an adult. Fuck, he missed adult Clint.

“It’s about your brother,” said Bucky.

“Yeah, I figured that,” said Barney. “Not exactly any other reason for you assholes to call me. What’s the idiot done this time?”

“It’s more what’s been done to him,” said Bucky, so glad he’d taken this call in another room from Clint, because Barney didn’t just sound pissed about the whole thing, he sounded like he was the angry kind of bitter. “He got hit by magic, and he’s eight years old again.”

There was a long silence, then Barney said, “What the actual fuck? What do you fuckers even get up to?”

He made a good point, but Bucky was pretty much done with everything right now, and just wanted to get this done. “Look, he doesn’t remember any of us, doesn’t remember anything that happened after he was eight the first time, and he’s been freaking out. He really wants to talk to you, he seems to think that you being his brother means you’re the only person he can trust.”

“Fuck,” said Barney again. “Jesus, nothing after he was eight? So our parents…”

“Yeah,” said Bucky, shortly. “Not that he seemed that cut up when he found out.”

Barney let out a bitter laugh. “Yeah, he wouldn’t be. Fuck. Okay, so what do you want from me? I’m not exactly the guy for sweet-talking kids.”

“You’re the guy for sweet-talking Clint,” said Bucky. “Look, just talk to him, try not to be an asshole, and maybe tell him that we’re his friends and he can trust us, because he’s unbelievably paranoid.”

Barney laughed again, but there was still no humour in it. “A kid not trusting a bunch of strange adults living in a stupidly fancy tower isn’t paranoid, it’s sensible.” He let out a long sigh, muttered a curse word under his breath, then said, “Okay, fine. Put the brat on and I’ll try and remember what we were like thirty years ago.”

Bucky went back through to the kitchen where Sam had whipped cream smeared over most of his face, Steve was clearly wondering if he should bother cleaning him up now or just waiting until they’d done eating and Clint was shovelling down his waffles with single-minded intensity. 

“Clint, your brother’s on the phone,” he said, and Clint immediately abandoned his breakfast.

“Barney!” he said, jumping down from his chair and rushing over for the phone. “Barney!” he said into it. “You’ve got to help me.”

Whatever Barney said made him scowl. “Don’t call me that,” he said, then glanced up at Bucky. “You can’t listen!” he announced, and disappeared with Bucky’s phone.

Bucky watched him go. “JARVIS, let me know when he’s off the phone,” he said, and went to finish his own breakfast.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” said Steve.

Bucky just shrugged. “Gotta be better than him running off to try and find his brother on his own.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” said Steve, but he didn’t sound very confident about that.

Bucky fixed him with a pointed look. “Are you saying that if it was kid you, you wouldn’t have rushed off to find me first thing?”

Steve made a face. “Yeah, okay,” he said.

Clint was on the phone for longer than Bucky had expected. He guessed Barney had managed to remember how they used to talk when they were kids. 

When JARVIS told him that the call was over and he went to retrieve his phone, Clint was slumped in the corner of his bedroom, tucked between the nightstand and the wall. He wasn't under the bed, so Bucky counted it as a win even if Clint didn't look happy.

“Okay?” he asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.

Clint turned his frown on him. “Barney said I should trust you.”

“Are you going to?” asked Bucky, trying not to sound too hopeful. 

Clint just shrugged and looked back down at the phone. “He said you were my friends, and that he wasn't any more, and that I should have known family wasn't to be relied on, and that trusting you would be a much better idea than trusting him ever was and that he wasn't going to come get me.”

He sounded on the verge of crying when he finished that, which was what Bucky reacted to before he processed the words.

“Hey, it's okay, Clint,” he said, sliding off the bed onto his knees, but not reaching out to hug Clint like he desperately wanted to. “I know everything's different to how you remember, and it's hard to get your head around it all, but Barney's right. We're all here for you, however you need us.”

Clint shook his head as a tear escaped his control. “Barney's not.” He pulled in a sniff. “My mom's not.” Another tear slid down his face. “I only wanted Dad gone, not her. I just wanted her to be around more and take us to the park and smile more, like other moms.” He was fast losing the battle against his sobs. “Why did she have to die too?” 

The final word turned into a wail, and the tears flooded out. Bucky couldn't just watch any longer and moved in to hug him, but Clint reacted like a scalded cat to his touch, flinching away and then springing up and past him, throwing himself under the bed where Bucky couldn't reach him. He descended into full, noisy sobs as soon as he was curled up right in the centre. 

“Hey, Clint, you don't need to hide,” said Bucky, which didn't get a response. He cast around for what else he could say. He remembered the first time he'd been himself enough to really feel the loss of his own family. Fuck, there was no way to fix that, and especially not for a little kid.

“I know it hurts,” he said. “It sucks, right? Being the only one left. But, Clint, you're not alone. Everyone here likes you, and smiles because of you, and wants to go to the park with you this morning. Especially me.”

Fuck it, if Tony had already committed them to this park trip, Bucky might as well take advantage of it.

“I know it’s not the same,” he added, when Clint didn’t stop crying, “and you’re allowed to be upset about your parents, but we’re all here for you, I promise.”

Clint didn’t respond to that, but his sobs did start to tail off. Bucky sat and waited, feeling useless but not sure what else to do. Nothing he could come up with was going to make Clint feel better, because it wasn’t as if Bucky could bring his mom back to life or somehow give him back the friendships he’d formed with all the Avengers as adults. All he could do was sit there and hope Clint realised that meant that Bucky was always going to be there if he needed him.

Clint was down to the occasional hiccough and deep, wet-sounding sniff when Steve came in. “Hey, we’re— What’s up with Clint?”

“Nothing!” called Clint’s muffled voice from under the bed.

Steve gave Bucky a _seriously?_ look. “He was talking to Barney, right? Did Barney say something?”

There was a note in his voice that said he was going to go down to the prison and lay one on Barney if he had. Bucky didn’t know how to respond, because technically Barney didn’t tell any lies, and he did do what Bucky wanted and tried to convince Clint to trust the Avengers, even if it was in the worst possible way.

“I think losing his family just hit him,” he said, as neutrally as he could, very aware that Clint could hear him.

The look on Steve’s face was about as sad as Bucky felt about the whole thing. He crouched down to look under the bed at Clint.

“Hey, I’m so sorry, Clint,” he said. “I know it’s hard, waking up and finding out that people you care about are gone, and I know you don’t know us, but I swear, we’re your friends, and we care about you. You don’t need to hide away to be sad.”

“Bucky’s my friend,” said Clint, suspiciously, and Bucky nearly punched the air in celebration, “but you just play with Sam. You don’t like me.”

Steve winced. “That’s not at all true,” he said. “I’ve actually known you longer than Bucky has, and longer than I’ve known Sam as well. We’ve been friends a long time, since I first woke up. I was really sad back then, because I’d lost my family and friends, but you were there for me. You made me realise that I could have new friends. I’m sorry I’ve been focusing on Sam, but I knew Bucky would look after you and, well. He’s my best friend, I know if you’ve got Bucky on your side, you don’t need much else.”

Jesus, the punk was laying it on a bit thick. Bucky rolled his eyes at him as Steve gave him a smile.

“Listen,” said Steve, “we were about to go to the park. I’d love it if you came with us, but if you want to stay here, I understand.”

“And I’ll stay with you either way,” Bucky promised. “If you just want to stay under the bed and be sad, I’ll stay right here, or we can go to the park and find a tree to climb.”

There was a long silence, then Clint said, “I want to go to the park,” and started to shuffle back out from under the bed.

“Good!” said Steve as he emerged. “That’s good, it wouldn’t be the same without you.”

Clint’s eyes were red from crying and he wrapped his arms around himself as soon as he was clear of the bed, hovering close as if he’d need to dive back under it at any moment. Bucky’s heart ached for him.

“Can I give you a hug?” asked Steve.

Clint gave him a very suspicious look. “Why?”

“Because you’re sad, and I want to make you feel better,” said Steve.

Clint considered that, then nodded. Steve moved in and gave him a careful hug, and Bucky did his absolute best not to explode with jealousy. Of course a kid was going to be happier about Captain America hugging him than the grumpy guy with the metal arm who’d already scared him several times.

“Thank you,” said Steve, once he’d let Clint go. Clint just gave a weird awkward head bob.

“Can we climb a tree now?”

“Sure,” said Steve, standing back up. “Tony said he got you a coat yesterday, it should be in the closet.”

He opened the closet, and then went very still. “Bucky, did you know about this?” he asked, stepping back.

The whole closet was filled with kids clothes, most of which seemed to be Avenger merchandise. Bucky stared at it, then offered Steve a shrug.

“You sent the impulsive billionaire to Target,” he offered.

“Are those all mine?” asked Clint, sounding awed.

“I don’t think they’ll fit us,” said Bucky, standing up as Clint drifted closer to the clothes, reaching out to touch one of the sweaters. “I guess you can get changed out of that shirt, if you want.”

Clint looked down at his Captain America shirt, then back up at Steve. “No, it’s okay. I like this one.”

Steve beamed at him. Bucky tried not to think about how long Clint had been wearing that shirt, because persuading him to put on another one would almost certainly be too much hassle.

****

The others were waiting for them in the sitting room by the time Clint had washed his face and put a coat on. Sam was clutching a frisbee, but it was only when he rushed over to Clint to show him that Bucky realised it was painted to look like Steve's shield.

“Look! We can play we're fighting Hydra!”

Clint looked at it with a frown and Bucky braced himself for a rude comment that would make Sam cry.

Instead, Clint glanced up at Bucky and then nodded at Sam. “I'll play catch, but I'm not pretending,” he said.

Sam beamed with joy, and Bucky let out a breath.

“Tony, did you get that frisbee?” asked Steve, in a calm voice that Bucky instantly knew was covering a deep rage.

“Yep,” said Tony, tipping his glasses so that he could waggle his eyebrows over the top of them. “Sam thinks it’s great.”

Steve let out a very slow breath. “Okay,” he said. “That’s… good.”

“Are you gonna play with us?” asked Clint, and there was no way Bucky trusted the innocent note in his voice.

“Sure,” said Steve heavily, and Bucky met Clint’s eyes and then had to look away before he started sniggering. It figured that Clint was still a shit-stirrer. Had always been? Fuck, whichever, Clint was apparently a shit-stirrer right down to his DNA.

Steve looked up at Tony and then glanced at Rhodey. “Are you keeping the suits on stand-by?”

Tony nodded, and tapped the earpiece he was wearing. “JARVIS has them both ready. They’ll be with us in less than two minutes, if we need them.”

Steve nodded, then looked back at Sam and Clint. “Okay guys, if anything bad happens, Sam, you go to Rhodey, and Clint, you go to Tony, okay? They’ll get you out of the way.”

“I want to go with you,” said Sam immediately.

“What kind of bad thing is going to happen?” asked Clint.

“Nothing,” said Rhodey. “It’ll be fine, I’m sure.”

Clint gave him a deeply suspicious look. “Then why are you making plans?”

Bucky rolled his eyes at Rhodey before he looked at Clint. “Look, probably nothing is going to happen, but sometimes bad guys attack us. Like Hydra, or that woman from yesterday. If it does happen, Tony and Rhodey have flying suits, they can get you two to safety while the rest of us deal with it.”

Clint frowned, but nodded. Sam clutched his frisbee to his chest. “Will you hurt them?”

“Oh yeah,” said Bucky, with satisfaction. “If Hydra turn up, we’ll hurt them a whole lot.”

“Good,” said Sam with satisfaction, and for a moment Bucky could see the determined adult he’d become.

****

Sam insisted on holding Steve’s hand again for the walk to the park. Bucky stayed behind them, keeping a sharp eye out for anyone paying too much attention. Clint walked next to him, looking around and occasionally glancing over at Bucky when he thought he wasn’t looking.

Tony and Rhodey were behind them, having an argument about whether or not Tony should have said something or other to a three-star general, but Bucky had been around them enough to tune the bickering out.

Natasha had been nowhere to find when it had come time to leave. Bucky hadn’t managed even an iota of surprise. Knowing her as well as he did, he figured she’d be around somewhere, keeping an eye over them without having to actually interact with Clint and Sam.

“If I play frisbee with Sam for a bit without calling him any names, will you let me climb a tree?” asked Clint when they were about halfway there.

Bucky snorted. “If it were up to me, we’d just go straight for the trees, but yeah, making nice with Sam first seems like a good idea. Besides,” he added after a moment’s reflection, “if the way the adult version of you can chuck Steve’s shield about is anything to go by, I’m guessing you’re pretty good at frisbee.”

Clint stared at him. “I throw Steve’s shield?”

“Yeah,” said Bucky. “You’re one of the few other people who can throw it properly.”

Part of which was because of the power of Clint’s arms and shoulders, built up from years of constant archery, but Clint also had an understanding of the physics behind it that meant he could hit what he was aiming for and manage the ricochets in a way that Bucky had had to practice to get right.

Clint’s face creased into a frown but he didn’t start accusing Bucky of lying to him, so Bucky took it as a win.

When they got to the park, they all played frisbee for a bit, even Tony once Rhodey had explained how it worked, because apparently he’d never played before. Bucky wasn’t sure if that was a rich person thing, or an isolated childhood thing, but either way it was pretty funny watching Tony flail at the frisbee any time it came his way, missing catching it nine times out of ten.

Clint turned out to be just as good as Bucky had expected. He shook off most of his tense suspicion as he got into the game and even started to grin when he managed to catch a particularly wild throw of Tony’s. Bucky could see in it the seed of the fierce grin his adult self always had when he managed to make a particularly tricky shot, and was hit by a wave of loss. God, he missed that Clint so much.

“Okay, I give up,” announced Tony after a particularly wild throw of his nearly took Steve’s head off. Bucky was pretty sure Tony had been aiming for Rhodey. “That’s enough healthy exercise and communal fun. Who wants a soda?”

“Me!” shouted Sam, jumping up in the air and waving his arms. “I want soda!”

Bucky glanced at Clint, who only hesitated for a moment before he nodded his head. “Yeah, okay,” he said, and Bucky kinda wanted to tussle his hair with pride.

He didn’t, though, because he had a feeling Clint might try and bite him if he tried.

“And then we’ll go find you a tree,” he said, and Clint nodded and even smiled at him.

It finally felt like things were going well, which of course was why it was at that moment that there was a sudden blast of magic from the sky. 

A ball of green fire landed right in the centre of the rough circle they’d formed to play frisbee, and then exploded outward, evaporating into the air to reveal a man. He was enormous, bald, dressed in black armour, and wielding a two-headed axe. Bucky didn’t think he was there to join them for a soda.

“Clint, get to Tony!” he shouted, pulling out the gun he’d stashed away because he’d known some kind of shit like this was going to happen.

“Sam!” he heard Rhodey call, “this way!” 

“Who the fuck are you?” Bucky asked, trying to keep the guy’s attention away from the kids until Tony and Rhodey could fly them to safety.

“I am Skurge the Executioner!” he announced. “I will defeat you in the name of my lady, Amora!”

Okay, so he was definitely a bad guy. Bucky shot a round at the guy, but the bullets just bounced off him, not doing more than keeping him focused on Bucky. He raised his axe and charged at him with a bellow, and Bucky darted to one side. Off to the left there was another explosion of green fire, and he glanced over to see that Amora was here as well, keeping Steve busy.

Rhodey had Sam in his arms and was running out of range with him, glancing up at the sky for the arrival of his suit. Bucky glanced towards Tony to make sure Clint was safe as well, and his heart skipped a beat.

Clint wasn’t there. Tony was pulling his watch out to become one of his gauntlets, but Clint wasn’t with him.

“Where the fuck is Clint?” Bucky shouted, ducking under another blow from Skurge’s axe.

Tony held up his hand and sent a blast from his gauntlet that hit Skurge hard enough to send him flying for the moment. “He took off!” he said. “I tried to get to him, but he just sprinted into the trees.”

Fuck. Of course the brat wouldn’t follow the goddamn plan, he never followed plans when he was an adult either.

Bucky glanced up to see the Iron Man suit incoming. “You keep this asshole busy, I’ll get Clint,” he said and Tony nodded, shutting down his watch gauntlet and then standing with arms outstretched long enough for the suit to settle around him. Bucky sent one last burst of bullets at Skurge as he charged back towards them, keeping his attention until Tony had the suit powered up and was ready to step in and blast him again, this time with the full force of the Iron Man suit.

Bucky left him to it and headed off in the direction Tony had indicated, trying to work out exactly where Clint might have gone to. There was a stand of trees ahead and he focused in on it, looking up and trying to spot a small figure clinging to the branches.

He didn’t see him until he was in the middle of the trees. Clint was high up in one of them, half-hidden behind leaves. Bucky looked at him, then glanced over his shoulder to make sure the bad guys weren’t watching as he started up the tree after him.

“Hey, kid,” he said as he climbed, looking up at Clint’s scared face. “Remember how we said you should go to Tony if anything bad happened?”

Clint shook his head, but didn’t say anything. The branch he’d climbed out on was too slender to bear Bucky’s weight so he stopped climbing once he’d reached the same height and wedged himself against the trunk, taking another look at the battle to see both Amora and Skurge were still some distance away. Tony and Steve were fighting them in tandem and Rhodey was nowhere to be seen, which Bucky hoped meant he’d taken Sam and gone to safety.

“Hey, I know it’s scary,” he said, “but Tony can get you away and back to the Tower, where you’ll be safe.”

“No!” said Clint, and crawled a little further out on the branch, which started to bend under him.

“Okay!” said Bucky, before he could go too far and end up falling. “Okay, we’ll just stay here then, okay?” He adjusted his grip on his gun and ducked to look under a branch at the fight. It didn’t look like it had come any closer, but with the trees in the way it was hard for him to see more than the occasional flash of light or the red and gold blur of Iron Man soaring over.

“You’re gonna stay with me?” asked Clint.

“Yeah, of course,” said Bucky, looking over. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Clint. You’re my friend.”

Clint frowned as he considered that and Bucky looked back out at the fight, but it had moved around so that he could see even less of it. He shifted his grip on his gun, casting his eyes around the surroundings and hoping like hell Amora didn’t have any more bullet-proof buddies, because there was only so much he could do with one hand gun and a couple of knives. Fuck, why the hell was she even attacking? Thor was still off on Asgard, shouldn’t she be there?

“You know, it would be easier to protect you if you were closer this way,” said Bucky. “Any chance you want to come back towards the trunk?”

Clint stared at him for a long moment, then carefully began to shuffle back towards him, and Bucky let out a quiet sigh. If he couldn’t hurt the guys attacking, at least he could put himself, with his metal arm and serum-enhanced body, between Clint and anything they might throw at him.

Clint stopped next to him, wriggling around until he was sitting on the branch and looking out in the same direction as Bucky. “Is Captain America fighting them off?”

“Hopefully,” said Bucky. “That’s what we keep him around for.”

There was a shout and a loud crash from wherever the fight had moved to and he winced. Fuck, he hoped Steve and Tony were enough to handle this on their own.

“He’s your best friend,” said Clint.

“Yeah,” agreed Bucky.

Clint shifted on his branch. “Shouldn’t you be helping him?”

“Nope,” said Bucky. “I should be right here, making sure you’re okay. Steve can look after himself.”

Clint scowled. “I can look after myself too.”

Bucky couldn’t hold in a snort. “Yeah, not really in the same way,” he said. “You get you’re just a kid, right? I reckon you’re probably better at looking after yourself than—” _you should be_ , he thought but didn’t say, “most other kids, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need someone to make sure you’re okay.”

Clint scowled down at the ground and Bucky couldn’t help adding, “Besides, it would kill me if something happened to you. You’re just as important to me as Steve is.”

Clint gave him a wide-eyed look of surprise that Bucky was pretty sure he’d have gotten if he’d said that to the adult version of him as well, but before he could reply, there was a woman’s voice from the ground.

“Clint? Clint, where are you?”

Clint sucked in a surprised gasp. “Mom?”

A woman with brown hair shot through with grey came out from between the trees and looked up at them. “Clint, honey? Is that you?”

“Mom!” called Clint. “They said you were dead!”

Bucky tensed up, raising his gun to aim at the woman. “That’s not your mom.”

Clint glanced at him, then back at the woman.

“I’m not dead, they’re just trying to keep you away from me. Clint, please, come down.”

Clint shifted on his branch but didn’t move, glancing at Bucky for assistance.

“It’s not your mom,” said Bucky again. “Don’t be fooled.”

“Honey, please,” said the woman. “I lost you when that woman attacked, I’ve been looking all over. You and me, we’re going to start a new life together, now that your father’s gone. I’ve got us an apartment, and you can go to a new school, and we’ll be able to spend weekends together going to the park, or the zoo. Just like I always wanted for us, but there was never the money and your father… Well. Things are going to be different now, please come down.”

She held out her arms and Bucky felt Clint twitch again, making a sad little noise that nearly broke Bucky’s heart. “Mom?”

Bucky braced himself to have to grab Clint and keep him up with him, knowing full well that it would betray all the carefully built up trust he’d managed to accumulate, but there was no way in fuck that he was letting Clint go down. Better he was safe and hated Bucky than that he got hurt.

“C’mon, baby, I made cookies,” she said. “Let’s go home and you can have some.”

Clint flinched and looked at Bucky with wild eyes. “That’s not my mom,” he said in a hoarse voice.

“No,” said Bucky, relief rolling through him.

Clint shifted closer to him, reaching out to take hold of Bucky’s hoodie. “You’re not my mom!” he shouted down to the woman. “Go away!

The woman stared up for a moment longer, then let out a very long breath. “Damn you, child, why couldn’t you let this be easy?” she asked, and her appearance fell away to reveal Amora. 

Clint gasped with shock and moved in closer to Bucky, who gave in to temptation and wrapped an arm around him. Clint didn’t pull away like he’d half-feared, he just settled under Bucky’s arm, still glaring at Amora, and Bucky had to work hard not to let the way his heart melted at the display of trust show on his face.

“You can fuck off now,” he said to Amora, and sent a couple of bullets her way as a warning, even though he knew they wouldn’t hit. “Thor’s on Asgard if you want to go bother him.”

“I need the child,” said Amora, raising her hands and floating upwards until she was at the same height as them. “Thor will come to me then.”

“You’re not having him,” growled Bucky, wondering where the hell Steve and Tony were and gripping Clint tighter.

Amora just laughed. “Of course I am,” she said. “But if you insist, I will take you too.”

She brought her hands together in front of her, forming a ball of light between them, and Bucky gave up on subtle and just shot every bullet he had left in his gun at her, then grabbed Clint and turned them so that Bucky’s back was to her and Clint was protected by his body.

Bright light flashed and a heavy force hit them, and then Bucky blacked out.


	4. Chapter 4

Bucky woke up on a metal floor with a splitting headache and a bone-deep ache throughout his entire body, but the sound of near-by crying drove his pains from his mind almost immediately. 

He sat up, turning until he found Clint, huddled up in the corner with tears streaking his face.

“Hey,” he said, and then cleared his throat when it came out a bit rough. “Hey, it's okay.”

“Bucky,” said Clint in a trembling voice. “I thought you were dead.”

“Oh, hey, no,” said Bucky, moving closer but not letting himself pull Clint into his arms like he wanted to. “It'll take a lot more than that to kill me. I'm okay. How are you, she didn't hurt you, did she?”

Clint shook his head. “I just woke up here, and you weren't moving, and—” He burst into fresh floods of tears, then threw himself at Bucky. 

Bucky gratefully pulled him in close, rubbing a hand over his back. “Hey, it's okay. We're both okay.”

For now, at least. Who knew what Amora had planned?

“I'm sorry,” said Clint between sobs. “I'm sorry, please don't be mad.”

“I'm not mad, not at you,” said Bucky. “Why would I be?”

Clint shook his head and pressed his face into Bucky's hoodie. “I'm being a crybaby,” he muttered, and drew in a noisy sniff.

“You’re more than allowed,” said Bucky. “Fuck, I’m pretty close to blubbing myself.” He ran a hand over Clint’s back and looked around at their surroundings. They were in what looked like an old chiller with a metal floor and walls, and a huge, thick door that he didn’t think even his arm was going to be able to punch through. The only feature of interest was a vent high up on one wall, but it wasn’t large enough for Bucky to get through and there was no way he was sending Clint off on his own.

Damn it, they were going to have to sit tight and wait for the others to rescue them. Bucky hated having to do that.

Clint sat back, scrubbing at his face with his jacket sleeve. “Big boys don’t cry.”

“Sure they do,” said Bucky. “Emotionally constipated manbabies don’t cry, but big boys definitely do, especially when shit looks this bad.”

Clint blinked at him in a way that meant he didn’t really get what Bucky was talking about, then just scowled and wrapped his arms around himself. “Can you get us out?”

“I don’t think so,” said Bucky. He made himself move away from Clint, standing up so he could take a look at the door. He gave it a testing thump with his vibranium fist but it didn’t even dent, and there was a green spark at the impact. Steel reinforced with magic, great. He patted down his pockets for anything useful, but his weapons and cellphone were all missing.

“Yeah, we’re pretty stuck,” he said, turning back to Clint. “I’m sorry. We should have stayed in the Tower, where it was safe.”

Clint shuffled back into the corner, curling over his knees. “Then we wouldn't have gotten to play frisbee.”

“That's true,” said Bucky, although the gym was probably big enough for them to have had a pretty good game. He sat down next to Clint, carefully leaving a gap of half a foot. “You enjoyed that, then?”

Clint nodded. “I liked being better than Tony at it.”

Bucky laughed. “Guess some things don't ever change.”

Clint had his chin resting on his knees, but he turned his head to grin at Bucky. “I like being the best at stuff. I always beat Barney at Monopoly.”

“Yeah?” said Bucky. “How does he take that?”

Clint shrugged. “We don't play anymore.”

Bucky wondered if there was a Monopoly set at the Tower. He was willing to bet Tony was a really bad loser at it.

Clint curled tighter over his legs and Bucky realised that even though the chiller wasn't on, it was still cold inside it, and Clint's jacket wasn't very thick.

“Here, take this,” he said, stripping off his hoodie. “I don't feel the cold much anymore.”

Clint wrapped it around himself, putting his arms into the sleeves so that they hung down over his hands. “Thanks.”

Seeing him smothered in Bucky's clothing like that made him feel better, as if mere cloth had a chance of protecting him when Bucky was already doing such a bad job. He wondered what it would be like to see adult Clint in his clothes, then had to push the thought away when the image made his heart swell in his chest. 

“Do you think she's gonna give us lunch?” asked Clint.

Bucky sighed and tipped his head back against the wall. “I doubt it,” he said tiredly. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” said Clint, and he huddled down further into the hoodie. 

A long few moments of silence passed by. 

“You want to play I Spy?”

Bucky laughed. “Sure, if you can see something that's not metal, metal or more metal.”

Clint grinned at him. “I spy with my little eye, something beginning with C.”

Bucky looked around. “Cell?”

“Nope,” said Clint. 

“Cold metal? Clint? Closed door?” tried Bucky. 

“No, no and no,” said Clint. 

Bucky took another look, then shook his head. “I give up.”

Clint gave him a triumphant look. “Captain America's best friend.”

Bucky snorted. “Okay, very clever. Hey, that's another C: Clever Clint.”

That was apparently the wrong thing to say, because the smile vanished from Clint's face and he scowled. “I'm not clever, don't tease me,” he said and curled up tighter in the hoodie.

“Are you kidding?” asked Bucky. “You're one of the smartest guys I know. Maybe not in the same way that Tony is, but you spot things the rest of us miss all the time. You realised that you and Sam used to be older real quick.”

Clint shrugged. “That was easy,” he muttered into the hoodie.

“Maybe for you,” said Bucky.

Clint didn’t seem to have a reply to that. They sat in silence for a few minutes while Bucky tried to work out how long he’d been unconscious, how long they’d been gone, and when the others were going to turn up for them. If Amora was using magic to hide them, they could be waiting a long time.

Fuck, all he’d wanted to do since Clint had got turned into a kid was keep him safe, and yet he’d let this happen. He should have sent Tony to find Clint in the park so that he could have just scooped him up in his suit and got him back to the Tower, with all its security systems and failsafes, and the weird magical ward thing Tony had somehow talked Doctor Strange into putting up around it.

If Amora came in and wanted to hurt Clint, what could Bucky do to stop her? He had nothing that could counter her magic. He’d be unable to do anything but watch.

Fuck, he couldn’t think about that. Steve and the others would get to them before that, they’d get Clint out to safety, and then Thor would show up with some way to get him back to being an adult, and Bucky would finally get to go on that date.

He really wanted to go on that date.

Clint shifted, sitting back and drawing his arms into the hoodie and rummaging for a moment, then put them back through the sleeves. “If you’re hungry, I’ve got a cereal bar. We could share?”

He held it out to Bucky clutched in his hand as if he wasn’t all that sure about letting it go. What the hell was Bucky going to do with this kid who hoarded food and snarled at anyone who got close, but also offered to share with Bucky when there was nothing else around?

“No,” he said. “I’m good, you should have it.”

Fuck, if Amora did come in here, she was going to have to go through Bucky to get to Clint. He didn’t care how powerful her magic was, he’d find some way to hurt her.

Clint only ate half the bar, then carefully tucked the rest away. “There might not be dinner either,” he said when he caught Bucky looking. 

There was an air of casualness about the way he said it that made Bucky want to clench his fists. It was a damn good thing Clint’s father was already dead, because Bucky was just about ready to kill him himself. No kid should be that easy with the idea of having to ration food.

“I’m sure the others will have come for us by then,” he said, trying to sound optimistic. “Steve’s kinda tenacious like that.”

The look Clint gave him in response was entirely too sceptical for an eight-year-old. “What if the lady comes before that?”

Bucky didn’t have a reply for that that wasn’t going to either freak him out, or be a lie. He wasn’t going to lie to Clint, so he just shrugged. “We’ll figure that out if it happens.”

Clint nodded, looking as utterly miserable about this whole thing as Bucky was, and Bucky was just so mad at himself for not being able to protect him better.

“Can I give you a hug?” he asked, because ever since Steve had asked the same thing earlier, he’d been thinking about how easy he’d made it look to get Clint to let him close to him. And Clint had hugged him when he’d been crying, that had to mean Bucky wasn’t asking too much, right?

Clint nodded and Bucky moved over so that he could wrap him up in his arms, pulling him in close. Clint held himself stiff for a second or two before relaxing into it, putting his arms around Bucky in return. God, he was just so _small_ , how the hell was this kid really the same person as the tall, built guy that Bucky had seen take out half a Hydra unit without pausing for breath?

“Thanks for staying with me in the tree,” said Clint, so muffled by how his face was pressed into Bucky’s chest that Bucky almost didn’t catch it. “Being here alone would have been horrible.”

The idea of Clint being locked up like this without Bucky to at least give him a hoodie and a hug, even if he couldn’t manage anything else, made his guts turn cold. “I wouldn’t have left you,” he said. “I’m never gonna, not unless I don’t have a choice, okay?”

Clint nodded against Bucky’s shirt. “Okay,” he said, and he actually sounded like he believed Bucky, which felt like a miracle right there.

There was a faint tap from the direction of the vent and Bucky let Clint go, whirling around and making sure that he was between Clint and any potential danger.

“Sorry to ruin the moment,” said Natasha from behind the vent. “Do you think you could help me get this grill off?”

Bucky let out a long breath of relief. “Fuck, it’s good to see you,” he said, hurrying over to start prying the grill off with his metal hand. “Where are the others?”

“On their way,” she said. The moment the grill was off, she crawled out of the vent, landing lightly on her feet and then giving Clint an assessing look. He’d stood up and retreated to the far corner, braced as if expecting a fight.

“You’ve met Natasha before, right?” said Bucky.

Clint nodded. “Everyone says she’s my best friend,” he said, “but she’s been hiding from me.”

There wasn’t a single note of accusation in his voice but Bucky could tell from the way Natasha stilled that she was internally wincing. Good, she deserved it. Hiding away just because she didn’t know how to deal with Clint being a kid was a bullshit move.

She turned to Bucky rather than responding to Clint, of course. “We’re in a warehouse in Queens,” she said. “I followed you from the park but it’s going to take the others a while to get here. I tried to unlock the door, but there’s magic keeping it shut.” She pressed her lips together for a moment, before adding, “I did hear Amora talking about using Clint as leverage against Thor.”

Her eyes darted to the vent, but they didn’t need to. Bucky already knew what she was saying.

He turned back to Clint. “You’re going to have to go with her,” he said. “Out through the vent.”

Clint’s eyes went wide. “No!” he said. “I don’t know her!”

“I know,” said Bucky, “but the first thing Amora is going to do when the others attack is come in here and try and use us as hostages against them. If you’re already gone, she can’t hurt you.”

A fierce scowl took over Clint’s face. “So she’ll hurt you instead?” he said, which Bucky had been hoping he wouldn’t realise. “No way. I’m not leaving you behind. We’re _friends_. You said so.”

“I did, and we are,” said Bucky, “but that doesn’t mean it makes sense for us both to stay here to be hurt. I can’t get through that vent, but you can, and Natasha will take good care of you.” He hesitated, but it seemed like being completely honest with Clint had been the best plan all along, so he added, “And it will hurt me a lot more if you get hurt than if I do. I care about you, Clint, which means I need you to be safe. Please, go with Natasha.”

Clint gave him a hurt look, then looked at Natasha with suspicion. “I don’t know her.”

“I know,” said Natasha, “and I’m sorry but, Clint, Bucky’s right. If you stay here, it will make things worse for him. Come with me and I can get you back to safety while the others get Bucky out.”

Clint screwed his face up and stamped a foot. “No!” he shouted and Bucky winced, hoping Amora wasn’t listening. “I won’t leave you! You’re my _friend_!”

Fuck. Bucky had no idea what to do if logic didn’t work. He glanced at Natasha but it was clear she wasn’t going to be any help, so he gritted his teeth and looked back at Clint. “This isn’t a discussion,” he said. “You need to go. You’ll get to go crawling through the air vents,” he added. “You like that kind of thing, right?”

Clint shook his head and Bucky could see tears in his eyes, although he blinked them back before they could fall. “What if I go and then something happens to you and you never come back?”

Bucky opened his mouth to tell him that that wasn’t going to happen, but it wasn’t something he could guarantee and, damnit, he really didn’t want to lie to Clint. “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Here’s a better question. What exactly do you think you’re going to be able to do if it does, Clint? If Amora tries to hurt Bucky, all you’re going to be able to do is get in the way and give her an easy target. Bucky is far more likely to get hurt trying to protect you than if he only has to look after himself.”

Clint stared at her for a long moment. Bucky saw the exact moment he gave in, and breathed a sigh of relief.

“I don’t like you,” Clint said to Natasha, balling his hands into fists. 

“As long as you let me get you to safety, I don’t care what you think of me,” she said, which Bucky was pretty sure was a lie.

Clint walked over to the air vent with heavy steps. He glanced up at it, then back at Bucky. “You can lift me in,” he said. “Not her.”

“Sure,” said Bucky, and went over to lift him up, taking his weight under his armpits and trying not to think about how small and fragile he was. “Do everything Natasha tells you to,” he said. “Let her get you to the Tower, and I’ll come find you there as soon as I can, okay?”

“Yeah, I got it,” bitched Clint, grabbing the edge of the vent and pulled himself inside. He glanced back at Bucky once he was fully inside. “Don’t get hurt.”

Bucky nodded and stepped back so that Natasha could follow Clint inside. “Take care of him,” he said, and she rolled her eyes.

“Of course,” she said, then pulled herself up into the vent, crawling inside after Clint.

Once they were both gone, Bucky picked up the grill and set it over the vent again so it wasn't obvious where they'd gone, then sat back down on the floor to wait.

Somehow, it seemed a lot colder without Clint huddled next to him.

****

It was about half an hour later when the door lock clicked open. Bucky stood up as the door opened and a wave of noise flooded in, explosions and crashes and, somewhere far off, the whine of Tony's repulsors. Apparently the cavalry had finally turned up.

It wasn't one of the Avengers that came in, though, it was Amora, sweeping in with more confidence than Bucky thought was warranted when it sounded like her place was getting trashed pretty badly. 

“Child!” she started. “Come—” she broke off as soon as she realised Bucky was alone.

“Where is he?!” she demanded. 

Bucky just shrugged, making sure to look as smug as possible. “Guess he had somewhere else to be.”

She made an inarticulate noise of rage and raised her hands, green fire forming a ball between them, and Bucky threw himself to one side to avoid it as she flung it at him. It passed close enough for him to feel the heat.

He rolled back onto his feet, keeping his weight on his toes so that he could move in a split-second as she started to form another ball of green fire in her hands.

Shit, how long could he keep dodging her magic? He was fast, but not that fast. 

“Amora!” bellowed a voice outside, and Bucky breathed a sigh of relief.

“Prince Thor!” she shouted as she turned, because apparently greeting people by yelling was an Asgardian thing. She threw her ball of fire at something outside the chiller, then disappeared from the doorway.

There was an explosion and a crash, then a bellow from Thor. Bucky wondered about maybe just staying where he was, out of the way of any more Asgardian fuckery, but that seemed like chickening out.

He did wait until the noises had moved away from him, then took a careful glance out of the door before he left the chiller. It was in the corner of a large room filled with rusting equipment and conveyor belts, and Thor and Amora had already disappeared, probably through the hole blasted in the ceiling.

Steve was the only person in sight, jogging over towards him with his shield in his hand.

“Bucky! Are you okay?”

“Fine,” said Bucky. “Got any weapons for me?”

Steve shook his head apologetically, because of course the asshole only had his shield. Why the hell would a strategic genius think he needed a back up to the weapon he spent half a fight throwing away from himself?

“You won't need one,” said Natasha, appearing from around the side of the chiller. “Thor has Amora contained, and Skurge left when he realised she was defeated.”

Bucky whirled to stare at her. “What the fuck are you doing here? You're meant to be with Clint.” Fear seized his heart. “Where the fuck is he?”

She raised her hands in front of her and he realised that he'd advanced on her, fists clenched.

“Rhodey took him back to the Tower,” she said. “We thought it would be safer to get him there as soon as possible.”

Bucky took a deep breath but now he'd let the fear in, it wasn't going anywhere until he was able to see Clint was unharmed with his own eyes. 

“I need to get to the Tower,” he said to Steve. “Is the quinjet here?”

Steve nodded. “Outside.”

They headed outside as fast as possible, Bucky trying hard not to start running. Thor had Amora wrapped in some kind of golden lasso and seemed to be lecturing her.

“The lasso prevents her from using her magic,” said Steve, following Bucky's glance. “Thor brought it back from Asgard.”

“Did he find out how to turn Clint and Sam back?” asked Bucky. 

“He's going to take her to Asgard and imprison her. He said once she was off-world, the spell would collapse without her magic to sustain it.”

Bucky was going to get his Clint, adult Clint, back. He was finally going to get that date.

But he was going to lose the child version of Clint, just as he thought he was managing to form a connection with him. Somehow, even knowing that nothing he did now was going to make a jot of difference to Clint’s childhood, that still hurt. “I need to get back to the Tower.”

“We’ll all be heading back in a bit, once Thor has taken Amora and SHIELD have arrived to deal with the police,” said Steve, which meant they’d be here for hours, because there was no way Steve wasn’t also going to get suckered into dealing with the police.

Tony landed next to them, faceplate going up as he turned to Steve. “I lost Skurge,” he said. “I’m pretty sure he went to another realm.”

Steve nodded with a little frown, but Bucky wasn’t paying attention anymore. “You can take me to the Tower,” he said to Tony.

Tony blinked at him. “Okay, are we going to have to go back to talking you through please and thank you and all that shit? Because—”

Bucky didn’t have time to listen to his waffle. “I need to get back there and make sure Clint’s okay,” he said. “You can fly me over in half the time it would take the quinjet.”

That did the trick. Tony drew himself up in the suit with an indignant expression. “I could fly you there in a lot less than that, if you don’t mind messing up your pretty hair.”

“Okay then,” said Bucky and moved forward to step on his boot, slinging an arm around him like he’d seen Steve do.

Steve sighed. “Jesus, okay, fine, but Tony, I need you back here afterwards, okay? We’re stretched pretty thin as it is.”

“Understood,” said Tony, and his faceplate closed. “Hold on to your panties, princess,” he said, and they took off.

Flying with Tony had always been something Bucky was happy to leave to Steve, and actually experiencing it didn’t change that, but they landed on the balcony at the Tower seven minutes later and that was all he really cared about. He jumped down before Tony had even set down and headed inside. Rhodey and Sam were on the couch, watching some movie that Bucky paid no attention to.

“Where’s Clint?” he asked, glancing around.

Rhodey stood up, and something about the careful way he held himself made every nerve in Bucky’s body light up. “Chill, man, he’s here,” said Rhodey.

“Where?” asked Bucky. “His room? The linen closet?”

Rhodey hesitated, then came clean. “I’m not exactly sure. When we got back here, he just took off and hid somewhere. I tried finding him, but no luck. He doesn’t seem to be in any of the places he likes to go, but the floor is locked down so there’s no way he could have left it, and—”

“JARVIS, where is he?” interrupted Bucky, his heart beating double time in his chest.

“I’m afraid Master Barton has requested that his location remain confidential,” said JARVIS.

“Yeah, and that,” said Rhodey. “We probably should have reset some of his permissions.”

“Is he still in the Tower?” asked Bucky. “You can at least tell me that, right?”

“Master Barton is currently on this floor,” said JARVIS, and Bucky felt some of his anxiety ease. Not all of it though, because that wasn’t all fading until he had Clint in front of him where he could see him.

He looked around again, thinking about the cupboard in the kitchen that Clint had taken refuge in before, but Rhodey would have seen him if he’d gone in there. There was the faintest flicker of movement in the corner of his eye, and just like that he knew where Clint was.

“I’ve got this,” he said to Rhodey. “Stay with Sam.”

“That’s what I was planning,” said Rhodey, but Bucky was already out of the room and heading for Clint’s adult bedroom.

The door was still firmly shut, but Bucky wasn’t fooled. “I thought we agreed to keep this locked, JARVIS.”

“That is correct, Sergeant Barnes,” said JARVIS. “Except in the circumstance that someone was threatening to hurt Master Barton, which Amora was doing.”

Right, of course Clint had found a loophole.

Clint had somehow managed to get the cover back over the air vent once he’d crawled inside, but Bucky could see it was hanging at a slight angle. He pulled it down and climbed inside.

“It’s just me, Clint,” he called as he crawled down the vent towards the nest. “It’s Bucky.”

Clint was curled up in the corner of the nest, wrapped in at least two blankets and with a pile of empty protein bar wrappers next to him. He sat up as Bucky came around the corner, but didn’t struggle to leave his blanket huddle and come over, which Bucky had been secretly hoping for. He could really do with a hug right now.

“You came!”

“Said I would, didn’t I?” said Bucky. He settled into the comfiest sitting position he could manage in the small area without getting into Clint’s personal space. “How are you feeling?”

Clint ignored his question completely, which Bucky assumed meant he was okay. “Did she hurt you?”

“Nope,” said Bucky. “Steve and the others turned up and got me out, and Thor captured her. He’s got a way to stop her doing any more magic, so she won’t come after you again. He’s going to take her to another world and put her in prison.”

Clint considered that, then nodded. “Okay,” he said, settling back into the corner.

Bucky took a moment for relief to roll through him that they had both got out and that Clint was okay and in front of him. Fuck, he hadn’t realised how scared he’d been until it all just melted away.

Clint shuffled awkwardly. “Are you going to make me come down?”

Bucky shook his head. “Not if you don’t want to.” There didn’t seem any point when he’d be turning back to an adult soon enough. He wondered how much of this Clint would remember afterwards. Did Bucky even want him to remember going back to being this troubled kid who didn’t trust any of his friends?

Yes, because the alternative was having a gap in his memory, and Bucky had enough of those to not wish them on anyone else.

“When Thor takes Amora away from here, the magic making you a kid is going to fade away,” he said, because not warning Clint about that would be a dick move as well.

“Oh,” said Clint, shuffling tighter into a ball. “So I’m going to go away soon?”

“No,” said Bucky, “you’re just going to get older again. Remember how I showed you all the ways that you’re the same as the adult you?”

Clint nodded, but he didn’t look very happy. “I don’t want to grow up back home,” he muttered. “I want to stay here. With you.”

God, Bucky wanted him to grow up almost anywhere other than with his father, but it was too late. It had been too late for years.

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “I wish there was some way I could change things for you.”

“I guess at least I end up here,” said Clint. “With you, and the others. And I get a dog.”

“Yeah,” agreed Bucky. “And I know you get to climb a lot of trees along the way.”

Clint managed a weak smile at that, then descended into silence for a bit. Bucky wondered how long it would take for Thor to leave with Amora, and how long the spell would last after that.

“Would you—?” asked Clint, then his voice hitched and he paused to take a deep breath. “Can I hug you?”

“Of course,” said Bucky, holding his arms out, and Clint fumbled his way out of his blankets and threw himself into them, hanging on and pressing his face into Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky clung on just as tightly, because for all he was trying to tell himself that this Clint was the same as the adult Clint, it still felt like he was going to be losing something when he turned back. Clint was still wearing his hoodie, which sent a flush of affection through him.

“I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you,” he said. “I’m going to miss you.”

Clint drew in a tear-laiden sniff. “You’re lying,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “Why would you miss some whiny kid?”

“I didn’t say I was going to miss Sam, did I?” said Bucky, and won himself a damp laugh. “I’m going to miss you, because you’re smart and determined, and you don’t take any crap.”

He rubbed a hand over Clint’s back, feeling him shake with a sob, and then Clint said, “I’m gonna miss you too,” which just about made Bucky’s heart break, even if he knew Clint wasn’t going to be in a position to miss Bucky, because he’d just age back up and Bucky would still be right here with him.

Green light started to shine out of Clint’s skin, and he tumbled back out of Bucky’s arms onto his ass, staring at his hands as the magic coalesced around them. “Oh,” he said, sounding surprised, and then the light surrounding him grew too strong for Bucky to see through. 

“Clint!” he shouted, without really knowing why. He’d known this was going to happen, why the hell did it hurt so much to watch?

The ball of green fire surged and shifted around where Clint had been, growing larger, and Bucky dug his nails into his palms to stop himself reaching out to grab him. It billowed up and faded away, leaving behind the unbelievably welcome sight of Clint’s adult body, tall and musclebound and marked by scars.

“Hey,” said Bucky, grinning at him. “Welcome back.”

Clint groaned, rubbing at his face.

“Mother _fucker_ ,” said Sam’s voice from the other side of the vent, out in the living room, so he must have turned back at the same time. Bucky didn’t spare any attention for him though, he was too busy taking in every inch of Clint as he carefully shifted upright. This space wasn’t really large enough for two grown adults, but Bucky wasn’t exactly complaining.

“Jesus fuck,” muttered Clint, finally taking his hands away from his face and looking at Bucky. “Please tell me this was all just a dream inspired by shitty burritos.”

Bucky offered him a shrug. “Sorry. How are you feeling?”

Clint shook his head, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Kinda like an idiot. Jesus, you guys did not need to see me like that.”

“You remember, then,” said Bucky, and Clint nodded. 

“Every cringey moment of childish temper tantrum.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “You weren’t that bad. Let’s be honest, people are going to be mocking Sam for his Captain America idolisation for way longer than they are you for having justifiable reactions to being a kid in a tower full of strangers.”

Clint grinned. “Please tell me you got photos of him clinging to Steve like that.”

“Oh yeah,” said Bucky. “Tony took them off JARVIS’s cameras. Plus, Sam drew a picture of himself and Steve defeating Hydra that’s going to stay on the fridge for a good long while.”

“Awesome,” said Clint with satisfaction. He nudged at Bucky’s leg with his foot. “Thanks for not getting me to draw anything.”

Bucky snorted. “You’re kidding, right? Like I had any control over what you did or didn’t do.”

“Aw, you did fine,” said Clint. “I’m in one piece, aren’t I?” He made a face and glanced down at the Captain America shirt that had sized up with him. Bucky’s hoodie had stayed the same size, so it was now a bit too small for him, which was doing weird things to Bucky’s emotions. “Except I could really do with a shower. And to take my aids out, Jesus, why the hell didn’t the kid think it might be nice to let my ears breathe for a bit?”

Bucky shrugged. “He kinda seemed worried that we’d take them away.”

Clint was silent for a moment, glancing away out of the vent before looking back at Bucky. “My dad didn’t like people seeing them,” he said, quietly. “He used to make me leave them behind if we went out in public, and then told people I was just dumb when I missed stuff.”

Bucky drew in and let out a very long breath. “I’m sorry,” he said, and reached out to hold Clint’s ankle.

Clint nodded, looking away again, then pushed out a breath and plastered on a smile. “Okay, that’s enough hiding.” He kicked at Bucky again. “Let’s get out of here.”

Bucky nodded and turned to crawl back out through the vent, thinking that that was the first time Clint had ever even mentioned his dad, as an adult at any rate. He wondered if it was just that his childhood felt very close to the surface right now, or if he’d decided he could trust Bucky with it.

Bucky hoped it was the latter. He wanted Clint to be able to trust him now he was an adult like he’d been starting to when he was a kid.

“Oh, hey,” said Clint as they climbed out of the vent and back into his room. “Don’t think I haven’t realised that I totally missed our date. Do you, uh, do you still want to do it? Maybe tonight instead?”

Bucky couldn’t hold in his grin. “Tonight sounds great.”

Clint stepped down off the bed and took Bucky’s hands in his. “I’ll try and not get caught up in any magical incidents before then,” he said, and leaned in to press a soft kiss against Bucky’s lips.

“That would be nice,” said Bucky. “Once is an accident, but if you cancelled again because you’d been turned into a frog or whatever, I’d begin to think maybe you were just looking for excuses to stand me up.”

“I’d never,” said Clint. “Tell you what, I’ll still turn up even if I am a frog. I’m sure we can find somewhere in New York that would serve me some flies or swamp water or whatever the hell frogs eat.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows. “If you turn up as a frog, I’ll be the one cancelling.” he said. “I do have some standards, you know.”

“Noted,” said Clint. “Guess I really will have to shower, then.”

“Oh yeah,” said Bucky, and kissed him again, long and slow, just because he could now. “If you want to go climb some trees instead of going to dinner though, let me know. Seems like we kept promising you that you could, but it only actually happened while we were being attacked and you couldn’t properly enjoy it.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “Maybe after dinner,” he said. “I want to have some time being an adult with you before we regress to being teenagers and make out up a tree.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows. “Who said anything about making out up there?”

“I did,” said Clint firmly. “You may be too old to know the rhyme, but there’s only one thing that two people can do when they’re sitting in a tree.”

Bucky stared at him, and Clint grinned, leaning in close to say, in a sing-song voice, “K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” before he kissed Bucky again.

****

It turned out that Clint knew a tree in Central Park that had a branch wide enough for them both to sit on and stay balanced as they made out for longer than Bucky thought they would manage before it all got a bit precarious and he had to anchor them with his metal hand.

“You know, I think this is the best time I’ve ever had up a tree,” said Clint as he shifted back into a more secure position. “And I’ve had some pretty good times up trees.”

“And how many have you fallen out of?” asked Bucky.

Clint had to stop to consider that, frowning as he counted on his fingers.

“God, don’t answer, it’s only going to make me want to wrap you up in bubblewrap,” said Bucky.

Clint grinned. “Well, that’s even kinkier than making out up a tree,” he said.

Bucky rolled his eyes and turned to start climbing back down the tree.

“Hey,” said Clint as he followed him down, “do you think Sam will be up for it if I suggest frisbee tomorrow?”

“I think he’ll try to make you eat the frisbee,” said Bucky. “You should definitely do it.”

“Yeah,” said Clint happily, and Bucky thought about how many smiles had crossed his face that evening, and compared them to the tiny handful he’d managed to coax out of Clint Junior. If all he did for the rest of his life was find ways to make Clint smile, to make up for how sad he was as a child, then he’d count that as a life well lived.

He jumped down the last couple of feet then reached up towards Clint. “C’mon, I’ll catch you,” he said. Clint gave him a very sceptical look from two branches up. “Don’t you trust me?” added Bucky.

Clint sighed. “Jesus, if I break a bone I’m telling Cap it was your fault,” he said, then let go, dropping right into Bucky’s arms. 

Bucky caught him as neatly as he could, taking a step back to steady himself, then kissed him before he set him down on his feet.

“No sweat,” he said. “Let’s go home. I want to try making out with you somewhere warm and comfortable.”

“I am most definitely up for that plan,” said Clint, grinning again. Bucky pressed a kiss to the happiness lighting his face up, then turned towards home.


End file.
